I've read the reviews here, most of them from people living in the Netherlands. This movie seems to polarize these folk in ways that must be unique to the Dutch. I'd like to comment on it from a different cultural perspective.
Reviewers here make the point repeatedly that this is a quintessentially Dutch movie, and more or less insist that you have to be Dutch to comprehend it in toto. That may be true. I know a little German, enough to have heard the cadences and staccato rhythms in the dialog. And I could tell that the English translation, although working hard, was probably not able to do justice to the actual words. This is an instance where a dubbed version might be an improvement for non-Dutch speakers.
As an American, and a gay man, I found this movie totally accessible. The subject of euthanasia was not especially controversial to me, having known many gay men who chose that route in the 80s. Nor did the interaction between the two friends seem that unusual. I've had close friends who were straight and we could talk to each other in the same blunt, joking way Simon and Camiel do. I think this story could have been set in many other urban communities around the world, not just Amsterdam.
So I guess I'm saying I don't think this story is uniquely Dutch by any means. That it has an extra dimension for the Dutch because of the language, however, seems likely.
I liked the structure of the film, I liked the close and choppy editing, and I liked the progression of the story. In many ways the film's style is as unsentimental as the story, and that seemed appropriate.
