THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

SPELEN OF STERVEN 

Title: Spelen of sterven
English translation of title: To Play or To Die
Year of Release: 1990
Director: Frank Krom
Principal Boy Actors: Geert Hunaerts (Kees), Tjebbo Gerritsma (Charel)
Genre: Drama
Country of Production: Netherlands
Length: 46 min
Language: Dutch
Availability: The film was released on VHS in Britain in 1993 by the company Dangerous to Know as part of a collection of three short films under the overall title Boys on Film 2 (see image on right for front sleeve; click on image for full-size scan). An American DVD release under the English title 'To Play or To Die' seems to be just the VHS video transferred onto DVD. The film was finally released, with much better picture quality, on a German DVD (under the German title 'Spielen oder Sterben') by the company CMV Laservision, though without English subtitles.
English subtitles: The VHS and American DVD releases included hardsubbed English subtitles which, though perfectly serviceable, were not always strictly accurate. A completely accurate subtitle file is obtainable from opensubtitles.org (courtesy of 'diogenes'), which is synced to the German DVD.

Synopsis
An intelligent and introverted boy with an appealing mop of black hair, Kees (17 year old Geert Hunaerts) is relentlessly bullied at school but at the same time seems attracted to the chief of his tormentors, Charel (Tjebbo Gerritsma), whom he invites to his home one afternoon, when his parents are away.

Geert Hunaerts brings to his performance a degree of seriousness and emotional depth in what is surely one of the finest and most intense portrayals of adolescent introversion, and social and sexual isolation, ever committed to film.

Source Material
Based on a short story by Dutch writer Anna Blaman. The story was first published in Blaman's collection of stories Overdag en andere verhalen [During the Day, and Other Stories], J. M. Meulenhoff (Amsterdam), 1957.

See also: Crazy Love (1987), in which, among other things, Geert Hunaerts has a masturbation scene which he plays almost identically to the one in this film!

Screenshots