Shocking Blue

Coming-of-age film featuring four young actors is set in the Noord-Holland bulb-growing area. Jacques, Chris and Thomas are sixteen-year-old sworn friends. They ride their motorbikes, attend soccer matches and make raunchy films of each other with their mobile phones. When the extroverted Jacques seduces Manou whom Chris had eyes on, their friendship is put under pressure. When Jacques is killed in a tragic accident, it leaves Chris with a guilty conscience. Was it really an accident? When Manou reappears in his life with an unexpected message, Chris is revived. He flees his parents' marital problems and in the greenhouse where he tries to grow a blue tulip, he fits out a house for him and Manou. But this dream, too, is soon disrupted. De Cloe uses minute-long shots of boys riding their motorbikes across brightly coloured tulip fields and extreme close ups to gradually unravel the drama, thus avoiding the clichés of the trendy teen drama.