I have watched this movie in the cinema three weeks ago, and I am still not entirely sure what I think of it. Visually it is certainly stunning, and I did enjoy the quirky style of cinematrography. However, when it comes to comparing it with the book I am a bit hesitant.

One of the strong points of the book is that it offers you different versions of the story, and makes you question which version is the truth. This element is completely taken out of the movie, and it therefore misses this very interesting dimension. Due to the eccentric style of the movie the charaters became even more of a caracature than they already were in the book, and therefore less realistic. While still interesting to look at, this made it even harder to truly identify with them as a viewer.

Female sexuality is an integral part of the book and so the sex scenes could not have been left out, but watching them on a big screen definitely felt more uncomfortable then only reading about them. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, not all movies have to be comfortable. And yet I am finding myself doubting what message the movie was actually trying to bring across, and whether it succeeded in this. For example, although the movie did show one whole naked penis (contrary to the vast majority of other movies), there was still significantly more female nude on the screen. In my opinion, this took something away from the feminist message that (I assume) it was trying to portray.

All in all it left me with quite some questions, but I vastly prefer a movie that makes you think over a movie that does nothing new. So if you are in for a bit of an experiment, go see it! But if you do, don’t make the same mistake that I did: unless you are from a very open minded family, this might not be the best movie to go see together with your parents.