San Francisco's Castro Opens "Yes Nurse! No Nurse!"
with a little help from our friends
 David Lamb as Nurse Klivia San Francisco Opening, September 2004 |
 Nurse Klivia hands out appointment cards for the Castro opening |
 The Nurse is ready for your appointment at the Castro  Loes Luca, Paul de Leeuw, Paul R. Kooij |
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'Yes Nurse' is good medicineNew Dutch flick camps it up at the Castro Theatre. By Sabrina Crawford | Staff Writer San Francisco Examiner Published on Friday, September 3, 2004 |
| Move over Fred
and Ginger,
there's a new game in town. "Yes Nurse! No Nurse!", the new film by
Dutch director Pieter Kramer, is a glorious, imaginative homage to the
golden era of the late, great Hollywood studio musical -- and a
celebration of all its camped up, Technicolor glory. Saturated with eye-popping candy-coated colors, "Yes Nurse", paints an on-screen 1960s world where the streets are filled with singing and dancing, carnivals always come to town and the biggest problem in everyone's' lives is that mean, old, nasty neighbor. With a wink and a nudge, the film opens with a classic pairing of innocent lovebirds -- a shy, nervous young lady (Tjitske Reidinga) and her crime-prone, but good-hearted handsome suitor (Waldemar Torenstra). Whisking along the streets through the center of some imaginary town that looks very much like a Hollywood back lot, rain dousing them, umbrellas twirling in sync, the couple sing their newly enamored hearts out. And that's just the beginning. Following the misadventures of Nurse Klivia's (Loes Luca) rest home for the somewhat off-kilter, weary and otherwise wayward, the retro romp serves up choreographed numbers by nurses in matching white frocks, hats, and red patent tap shoes, a gay hairdresser who helps save the day and a dottering old engineer who just wants to make the world a better place with his happy pills. The only trouble with this film for American audiences is that it's foreign. And let's face it, isn't one of the greatest joys of a musical that the words are so simple you can catch on mid-song and join in, screeching at the top of your lungs in a broken falsetto annoying all your seatmates? Or maybe that's just me... Even so, if you love old musicals, this film will have you nodding "ya sizster, ney sister," in the aisle and dancing out the door muttering to anyone who will listen on the way home, "Ah, they just don't make 'em like that anymore." |
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