Allegro

Is there anything less interesting than drab surrealism? With ”Allegro,” the Dutch have taken an idea that the Latin Americans would have developed magically and the Russians would have developed intellectually and the Chinese would have treated as a philosophical fairy tale….but the Dutch use it as a starting point for another pretentious and frustrating fable of a nationalist indecision that must have started with Ernest Jones’ gross misinterpretation of Hamlet. The idea is this: A pianist who repressed his memory after causing the suicide of his lover by refusing to believe that she loved him is given the opportunity to re-visit his lost past. Although he cannot change the past, something happens to his psyche that improves his piano playing to the extent that he no longer blindfolds the audience that comes to hear him play. The film is lit in such ridiculous adherence to the creed of natural sources that every shot draws undue attention to the imaginative placement of blazing light bulbs.