J. Kessels (2015)

J.KESSELS is both a hilarious road movie and a bittersweet trip down memory lane, a crazy ride in a flame-adorned Plymouth Gold Duster from provincial Holland to Hamburg's Reeperbahn and back. And a hallucinatory trip through the mind of an author, who no longer knows if his novel is a product of his own imagination, or if he is actually living it. The lead character is Kessels, a chain smoking tough guy with a heart of gold. Kessels and Frans are ageing youngsters who like nothing better than to consume nicotine, beer and country & western music. However, in Frans' novels Kessels and he are fearless crime fighters: heroes even, but the world around them is unaware of it. Heroes who create a flurry of misunderstanding at every step. Frans accepts the assignment for Kessels and him to kidnap a philandering criminal in Hamburg and return him to his wife, because the caller is the younger brother of BB, or Brigitte, once the focus of little Frans' prepubescent sexual dreams and awakening. Frans expects that, after thirty-five years, the trip will finally drive him into the arms of his childhood fantasy. Well, the missing person case doesn't have much to it, but what do the two heroes not encounter along the way? Steaming tarmac, burning rubber and J. Kessels' Plymouth Gold Duster. Booze and nicotine binges. Deafening country & western. Totenköpfe. Reeperbahn porn vs. courtly love. Flying Burritos. Prostitutes. A Turkish pimp who quickly becomes a bothersome corpse in the trunk of Kessels' car. Rebellious characters - even Kessels goes on the run with Frans' ingeniously constructed plot. And then Frans has yet to meet BB, who is also - a small oversight of Frans' - pushing 50.