For a Lost Soldier (book)
- For the film by the same name, see For a Lost Soldier (Film)
For a Lost Soldier (Dutch title: Voor een Verloren Soldaat) is a 1992 Dutch film based upon the autobiographical novel of the same title by ballet dancer and choreographer Rudi van Dantzig. It deals with the romantic / sexual relationship between a 12-year-old boy (Van Dantzig) and a Canadian soldier during the final months leading up to the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation during World War II.
Plot summary
- NOTE: The filmed version differs considerably from the original book.
Jeroen (Jeroen Krabbé) reminisces about the time in 1944 when he (Maarten Smit) and other boys were sent to the countryside by their parents to escape the war. The city suffers from food shortages, with more food available in the country. He stays with an eel fisher's family, but despite the abundance of food, he is plagued by homesickness. Jeroen and his friend Jan go to the ocean and see an American plane in the water; Jan tries to go under but claims there are too many eels and comes up with a big cut on his upper right thigh.
Things change when the village is liberated by Canadian troops. Jeroen meets Walt Cook (Andrew Kelley), a Canadian soldier in his early 20s, who befriends him. Jeroen revels in the attention the soldier showers on him, at first treating him like a little brother but eventually their relationship becomes sexual. His foster parents are aware of the closeness between Jeroen and the soldier, but it is unclear in the film whether they are aware of the sexual nature of the relationship.
After a few more days, Walt's troop are ordered to move and Walt leaves without saying goodbye to Jeroen. Jeroen hears about it from his foster sisters that they are leaving and he rushes to the soldiers home, but finds that they have already left. Jeroen is lying awake in his bed and notices that the scarecrow that posed as Walt when his foster family took pictures, and races outside to get it but when he touches it his hand is badly hurt and his taken inside by his foster dad. The next morning his hosted dad is burning the scarecrow and notices the sunglasses that Walt left on the wire. Jeroen is heartbroken, having only a photo to remind him of the soldier which turns out to be ruined in the rain. After the war is over, he returns to his family back in Amsterdam, where he decides to go to America later in his life. [1]
(Above description of the movie/book from Wikipedia.)
