TULIPANI - Love, Honour and a Bicycle -

When Hans de Weers (Producer of The Surprise), asked me to read the script for Tulipani, Love, Honor and a Bicycle, I quickly fell in love with the wonderful cinematic theatricality of the mythological, fairy-tale like screen story.
It struck me that Tulipani, Love, Honour and a Bicycle is a fresh story with the promise of appealing to a broad international audience. I envision an amusing tragi-comedy, yet not without making a point.
THE STORY
The attraction lies in a simple premise that revolves around the relativity of the truth. A young naive woman tries to unravel the truth about her mythical father. By doing so she herself ends up a major player in her epic family history. But where does the truth end and where does the fiction begin? What is fact and what is fantasy?
I immediately saw similarities to the Classic Rashomon tale in which several storytellers reconstruct the truth from their own perspective and knowledge. But also to Ang Lee’s Life of Pi; which asks the viewer an important question; are you a person that prefers to believe in things that always make sense? Or are you a person that prefers to believe in miracles? There are no right or wrong answers – just an opportunity for introspection.
VISION
Without changing the script in any unrecognizable way I saw the opportunity to explore this theme even more in the script and execution of the film. In full support of Peter van Wijk, I introduced more storytellers in the script, creating different angles and views on the actual events.
Tulipani is a theatrical frame narrative about a mythical person (basically a fortune seeking refugee), told by several different Italian storytellers over the course of nearly half a century.
Due to the multiple storytellers the whole question of fact and fiction is being raised from the script and becomes a thematic part of the story. Because I introduce more storytellers, there is more room for doubt about the plausibility of the events. Sucking the audience in to a playful maze of fact and fiction. Opening up the possibility to emphasize the humor coming from the legendary characters and their situations.
Because the story is set in different countries and different periods, the film will become eclectic in style. Jumping back and forth in time will create a rich and complex arena in which the epic story of Anna and her family unfolds: entertaining and unpredictable, theatrical and dramatic.
With Tulipani Peter van Wijk created a fantastic story. And, in my interpretation of his story, the fantasy only grew. This is no ordinary story and its characters are far from ordinary. They are larger than life, similar to the main characters in Karakter (Character) and The Surprise. Also similar to both movies, this film is set in a non-Dutch, big arena, while paying lots of attention to details in production design, costume design, make-up etcetera. A style that within Dutch film unfortunately is an exception, but I’m certain will pay off in the way the public experiences the film.
I have great confidence in the production and the crew and look forward executing this highly original script into the exceptional international crossing border feature it deserves to be.