Memory Lane Review: Endearing Dutch Road Movie

An elderly Dutch couple takes a trip down memory lane, or rather Western Europe, in this charming comedy drama that earns every second of its final act’s pathos.

This is the story of elderly couple Jaap (Martin van Waardenberg) and Maartje (Leny Breederveld), who, when we meet them, are spending their slow-paced, uneventful retirement almost entirely at home. It’s clear these circumstances suit the grumpy Jaap just fine, he detests his one regular activity of singing with the local choir group, but Maartje has bigger plans. The chance to fulfill these ambitions comes when a letter arrives from Luis, an old Spanish friend who offers to host the couple for one last gathering. Despite his protestations, Maartje convinces her husband to take a road trip down to Catalonia in a car that’s also seen better days, launching a final journey and laying bare the couple’s circumstances and what lies in store for them in the future.

That it is Maartje, the one suffering from an only partially acknowledged early-stage dementia, who has such a desire to embrace whatever life has left to give her makes for a touching dynamic between the couple. Throughout their various exchanges, one moment bickering, the next reminiscing about past escapades, her joie de vivre gradually rubs off on Jaap, while he begins to discover his new role as carer in addition to husband.

Films with premises like this one tend to err on the side of caricature (this year’s Thelma) or utter desolation (Haneke’s Amour and Zeller’s The Father), so it’s refreshing to have a script whose cheeky humour compliments, rather than watering down, the very serious drama at its heart. Jaap and Maartje’s amusing battles with modern tech and contemporary food trends, the former mistaking a sushi roll for a biscuit to be had with his coffee is a delightful visual gag, are countered by depictions of war, refugee camps and rioting. These tonally well-balanced observations convey just how much of a different world the Europe of today is to the one our protagonists knew.

None of it would work as well as it does without the performances of the leads. Van Waardenberg has a magnificent expressiveness, his trademark being the wrinkling of his nose in dissatisfaction after one of Maartje’s musings or at the ridiculousness of modern life in general. Though it is Breederveld who must convey the biggest transformation of the two characters. Her portrayal of Maartje is another animated performance, she can’t seem to spend five minutes without running off on her poor husband, but there’s a tenderness there and an empathy for her character’s condition that is quietly charming.

The film’s plot is hardly its centrepiece, serving more as a (quite literal) roadmap along which the central duo’s dialogue plays out. Maartje’s deterioration is evidently a central device that must be explored, but her health waxes and wanes depending on how useful it is to the narrative; whenever a new set piece showed up, at a petrol station, hotel or restaurant along the way, I found myself longing for the simpler exchanges in that moving memory box of a car. As the final act rears its head, there is a certain inevitability to proceedings that reveals nothing we couldn’t have predicted, but feels harmonious with the film’s themes and the evolution of its characters. Despite leaning aggressively into sugar-sweet sentimentality, the emotional denouement is entirely earned and the final extreme wide shot on a Spanish beach will leave lumps in the throats of many.

Balancing humour and pathos so adroitly that neither is tarnished by the other, Memory Lane is a delightfully Dutch take on the road movie concept, depicting love, ageing and a changing continent with an ever-present twinkle in its eye. Few cinematic depictions of later life have engaged with their subject matter with such warmth and dignity.

Memory Lane is the Netherlands’ Official Entry for the 2025 Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film.