Nicole Kidman is on something of a tear – she's popping up in way more films than it feels like she used to, and many of them are really quite eye-opening. After her recent success with the erotic thriller Babygirl, she's now back in another potentially twisted-looking production.
Holland will hit Amazon Prime Video on 27 March, and promises a weird and wonderful story of a small American community, and the rot that lies underneath its surface. Kidman is right at the heart of the story, bringing her trademark brittle energy to proceedings.
She plays Nancy Vandergroot, the happy matriarch of a single-child family in the rural US town of Holland, which seems to model itself very deliberately on the Netherlands, from windmills to tulip fields, and cuisine to clogs. New York was originally New Amsterdam, so that might be less of a stretch than it sounds and looks.
Regardless, she's married to Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) and her life seems idyllic from the outside, with a happy son and interesting diversions to keep her busy. Clearly, though, something's going to tip her off that things might not be quite as squeaky clean as they seem in Holland.
In fact, from the way that the trailer's edited, it looks pretty highly likely that Fred's going to be at the centre of whatever badness is going on – he's mighty suspicious-looking, and Macfadyen has become a bit of a recent specialist in playing dubious characters. The rest of the cast is also mighty impressive, to be fair, with Gael García Bernal popping up in a support role, and an interesting name who's barely glimpsed in the trailer – Rachel Sennott.
So, the elements are all there for this to be another modern classic from Kidman and team, although this is one of those well-made trailers that actually leaves quite a lot up in the air. I'll be intrigued to see what the nature of the conspiracy at play here actually is, if there is one, and where the movie takes Kidman, who's shown that she's willing to be really committed to fun roles in recent years. Either way, getting an Oscar winner like this to lead a movie is always impressive, so it's another feather in Amazon's cap as it seeks to maintain the best streaming service out there.
