The Times BFI 50th
London Film Festival

Ion Martea
posted 19 October 2006

Mischa Kamp's debut feature starts with Winky Wong (Ebbie Tam), a six-year-old Chinese girl, moving to Holland with her mother to join her father, who owns a traditional restaurant in the outskirts of Amsterdam. The voiceover is in Dutch, despite the fact that Winky knew only Chinese at this point. At the outset, there is nothing to suggest that the film we are about to watch is any more than a tale about social integration, with a heavy take on culture shock. As the film progresses, the political dimension becomes only a background theme for a what is really a straightforward children's Christmas film.

With Winky's Horse, however, the young Dutch director shows that he can carry a children's favourite with exquisite tenderness and still leave ideas mingling in our minds at the end of it, without harming the entertainment.

Films (or any art-form at that) aimed at younger audiences are rarely truly successful, because their creators tend to prefer moralising to understanding a child's clear vision. The successful films, however, look at life through the eyes of the protagonists, managing to make the children feel at home in the theatres, and leaving the grown-ups in a nostalgic mood for careless days.

Winky's Horse, albeit not a great example of the genre, handles the task effortlessly. The story kicks off with the girl's integration into the school system. Her first day proves disastrous, as even an understanding teacher still makes it hard to adjust to a new lifestyle. When she meets her mother on her way home, she claims that school days for her are over, and there is nothing her mother could do to change her mind.

Winky is not a mischievous child, rather too well mannered to be an adventurous spirit. If people refuse to take her seriously, she prefers to stop arguing and assume a lack of empathy from the other party. She is mostly right, as her voiceover is sweet enough to convince us of her good intentions all the way. But her mood improves the moments she notices a pony lost at a street intersection. There is an immediate chemistry between the two, and Winky wants 'Saarte' to be her best friend, but the animal is at the end of its life, and Winky is soon lost again among strangers. School games do little to excite her, until she is forced into the holiday spirit, and finds out that every good child will get the present they want from Saint Nicholas on the 5 December. Her wish stops at only one thing - a horse.

The adventures that follow are warm and hilarious, with scenes rich in Christmas spirit. Watching Winky's Horse reminds one of the lack of good family films in recent years, and it's a relief to find out that the winter holiday is still a theme bursting with surprises. We never really truly reproach our parents for lying about the existence of Santa Claus (or maybe they never lied, sic). We do not reproach because those early years are the most magical ones in our life, and we remember them dearly, for all the love that was bestowed on us.

Kamp may not want much in this feature, and concentrates at entertaining us. Whether he is trying to argue that social integration happens not only on a linguistic or cultural level, but primarily at a personal one at the moment when the outsider finds her dreams fulfilled in the new community, is an idea worth exploring, yet not essential to our appreciation of the film. There is a rich canvas of social relations hidden in Winky's Horse, but ultimately the film brings only joy and love for the people around us. We almost wish we'd never found out that Santa Claus, St Nicholas, the Easter Bunny, and many other magical figures, never existed.