Lulu Film — 2014

The film’s centerpiece is a twenty-minute single-take sequence set in a sprawling, abandoned warehouse rave. Here, Lulu, having fled to London, sells herself not for money but for the fleeting illusion of control. Van Vliet delivers a tour-de-force performance, her face cycling through terror, ecstasy, exhaustion, and defiance as the bass thunders. It is in this descent that Nevejan makes her boldest statement: Lulu’s infamous death at the hands of Jack the Ripper is not shown as a grisly spectacle. Instead, the final scene cuts from the warehouse door to the white room, where Lulu finally stops scrubbing. She looks directly into the camera, her expression unreadable—triumphant or annihilated? The screen goes black. The title card reads: “I am Lulu.”

The film’s greatest strength is its refusal to explain or psychoanalyze its protagonist. We never learn Lulu’s “real” name, her origins, or why she possesses a near-pathological need to be desired. Nevejan cleverly inverts the male gaze that has historically defined the character. Instead of objectifying Lulu, the camera often lingers on the men who orbit her—the aging publisher Dr. Schön (a reptilian Gijs Scholten van Aschat), his weak-willed son Alwa (Benja Bruijning), the cloying artist Schigolch (Pierre Bokma)—as they project their fantasies onto her blank canvas. The film asks not “What is wrong with Lulu?” but “What is wrong with a world that simultaneously worships and punishes female desire?” Lulu Film 2014

The narrative follows Wedekind’s arc with startling fidelity but ruthless compression. Lulu moves from the bed of her wealthy patron to the arms of his son, from a painter’s muse to a countess’s lover, each relationship ending in financial ruin, madness, or death. However, Nevejan introduces a radical twist: the film is structured as a non-linear confession. Interspersed with the rising chaos of Lulu’s life—the accidental shooting of Dr. Schön, the trial, the flight from Germany—are stark, silent scenes of Lulu in a sterile, white room, scrubbing her hands raw. These interludes, shot in stark 16mm black and white, suggest a soul trying to cleanse itself of an identity imposed from without. It is in this descent that Nevejan makes