pink moon movie review

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When a young woman receives the absurd news from her father that he's had enough of life and wants it to come to an end, she is forced to search for a way to deal with his last wish. When a young woman receives the absurd news from her father that he's had enough of life and wants it to come to an end, she is forced to search for a way to deal with his last wish. When a young woman receives the absurd news from her father that he's had enough of life and wants it to come to an end, she is forced to search for a way to deal with his last wish.

• Floor van der Meulen
• Bastiaan Kroeger
• Julia Akkermans
• Johan Leysen
• Eelco Smits
• 2 User reviews
• 14 Critic reviews
• 3 wins & 9 nominations

Top cast 33

• co-worker Adrien

• Interested buyer house
• (as Mariana Aparicio Torres)
• guest party Jan

• Thrift store manager
• Thrift store employee

• co-worker Emily
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The father, actor Johan Leysen, died within a year after this movie was made on March 30th 2023.

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes
• Dolby Surround 7.1

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Iris (Julia Akkermans) has a normal middle-class Dutch life, and stays in touch with her aged father and her brother’s family. But everything regular and controllable gets overturned when her father Jan (Johan Leysen) announces that after his 75th birthday, he is going to take his own life. He’s not sick, either mentally or physically; rather his decision seems to him a logical solution to a nagging problem: from here on, life will only decrease in quality and increase in suffering.

The children are shocked, upset, dumbfounded. But while her brother Ivan (Eelco Smits) eventually gets down to scheduling his father’s suicidal proceedings, Iris remains in limbo, completely unmoored and unable to argue with her father’s resolute reasoning. This is fundamentally not something we can discuss and appreciate from different angles in polite conversation over wine or while doing the dishes. To Iris, it’s unnecessary, traumatic, and insane.

There’s a moment in Pink Moon that perfectly encapsulates the complex psychological effects this premise has on its main character. At one point, the family gets out of the car with Iris in the backseat, but the child lock stops her from opening the door, leaving her struggling and stuck while everyone else continues without her. It’s a striking, amusing moment of childishness, with Iris reduced to an infantile status in her inability to process her dad’s premature passing. She is stuck grieving someone who’s still alive—and Pink Moon surprisingly wants to make it as funny as possible.

It’s likely you’ll spend the first act of Pink Moon reflecting that 75 is a bit young to want out of life, before realising it’s these preheld principles that director Floor van der Meulen wants to challenge. There are no set rules for human life. Rather, we internalise tons of cultural beliefs that can reduce the agency and quality of life for elderly or unwell people. Van der Meulen’s film handles these confronting ideas with a nimble awkwardness, with Emo Weemhoff’s cinematography picking up every elongated silence in lengthy, hand-held shots (both van der Meulen and Weemhoff have experience with documentary filmmaking). 

But the aesthetic choices take a backseat to the writing and characters—or rather, they support them. Working from Bastiaan Kroeger’s taut, incisive screenplay, van der Meulen often frames our characters in empty rooms, dwarfed by pieces of furniture or cramped with someone in a bathroom stall. The style emphasises performances that manage to balance nuance and delicacy with arresting, funny personality.

Akkermans shines when showcasing Iris’ immaturity, leaning into each and every moment of passive-aggression like her life depended on it—whether it’s marking her territory on family belongings as if her sheet of stickers were a war flag, or over-enthusiastically guiding a prospective buyer around Jan’s home. We see here how much strain there is for her to “go with the flow”; she’s singled out in rejecting everyone else’s quiet conformity, and like an angsty teenager, rebels against parental authority once more.

But maybe, van der Meulen argues, you can find peace in such a situation. Realising that you can’t change someone’s mind helps you let go of the urgent panic you feel by trying.

In response, Leysen deftly illustrates how familiar Jan is with all his daughter’s erratic behavioural turns. He has, after all, gone through her childhood already. When he has to collect her from a fast food chain she slept in after a spiralling night out, he walks to her with the heavy sympathetic disappointment many of us remember from drunken youthful displays. He’s willing to humour some unhealthy impulses, remaining resolute about ending his life, but also willing to give people room to struggle with his choice. 

It’s a process hindered by a lack of actual, honest communication. There’s so much that’s unspoken between father and daughter in every scene they share; having two characters unwilling to communicate their true feelings results in a tension that makes every supporting character feel completely secondary.

It’s something Pink Moon ’s narrative also seems aware of; the film’s third act sheds all unnecessary characters and displaces father and daughter to snowy mountains where their volatile dynamic can be confronted in a way it couldn’t back in stiflingly regular society. But now that there are no distractions, this sequence only confirms a distance between Jan and Iris, visualised in a pane of frosted glass being fitted between the two characters, making her father forever distorted and opaque to her. But maybe, van der Meulen argues, you can find peace in such a situation. Realising that you can’t change someone’s mind helps you let go of the urgent panic you feel by trying.

Who’s really being selfish in Pink Moon ? Is it Jan by not considering the wishes of those who love him, or Iris who wants his death to be on her terms, in a way she can control? Jan is clearly framed as someone with more honour, distinction, and clear-mindedness; Iris is rendered a whimpering, tantruming child. But to judge who is being unreasonable in Pink Moon is to assess from a distance an incredibly emotionally charged dilemma, one that objective reason or logic cannot help. Instead, Pink Moon relishes in thorniness and discomfort, arguing that these are the truest, most human responses. 

Even though she ultimately doesn’t get what she wants, Iris ends up most able to process her father’s impending death. For all his careful planning and unaffected attitude, Ivan breaks at the last moment from the strain of keeping his emotions in check and can’t be present for Jan’s suicide. There’s shades of a crisis of masculinity in him, a rejection of vulnerability that is ultimately ill-fitting for processing Jan’s death, whereas Iris, in her untempered stropping, is more secure.

Iris stays with Jan to the end, not without showing one last burst of resistance by blocking Jan’s path to his deathbed—a piece of slapstick her father turns into a comic waltz. It’s an incredibly affecting image, watching a stubborn child stand in the way of the beloved parent who wants to leave them. How else should we react when faced with the thought that we’re not enough to make someone want to stay? Pink Moon doesn’t seek to answer that, instead encouraging us to feel as freely as possible, in the hopes that chaos and immaturity can help prepare us for the worst.

Pink Moon made its UK premiere at the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival. Read our exclusive interview with Floor van der Meulen here.

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by  Floor van der Meulen

When a young woman receives the absurd news from her father that he's had enough of life and wants it to come to an end, she is forced to search for a way to deal with his last wish.

more about: Pink Moon

Review: Pink Moon

With a perfectly transparent first feature, Floor van der Meulen dives subtly and without excessive heaviness into the heart of respect for free will in the choice to live or die   

14/06/2022 | Tribeca 2022

Interview: Floor van der Meulen • Director of Pink Moon

“We no longer know if we should laugh or cry about it. But that’s life, isn’t it?”

The Dutch filmmaker talks to us about her Tribeca-awarded film, which is now in competition at Les Arcs Film Festival   

Episode 11: Pink Moon (Netherlands/Slovenia)

The producers of Floor van der Meulen's film are invited to speak about their collaboration and the financing of their film, which has received Eurimages support   

17/11/2021 | The Co-production Podcast

Unifrance innovates in the form of MyMetaStories

Between 6 and 29 October, the online festival will shine a light on young European cinema, showcased on the traditional platforms but also within the metaverse   

26/09/2023 | Festivals | Awards | France

The Gijón Film Festival celebrates 60 years showcasing daring cinema

The Spanish festival celebrates its anniversary with a selection that gives a voice to debut directors, reaffirms established names and supports Ibero-American filmmakers   

10/11/2022 | Gijón 2022

European cinema travels to Les Arcs

Les Arcs Film Festival has unveiled the rich programme of its 14th edition which will take place from 10 to 17 December with Roschdy Zem as president of the jury   

09/11/2022 | Les Arcs 2022

Six First Cut Labs are on the lookout for their next projects

After enjoying its most successful year yet, the consultancy programme is awaiting new projects for its upcoming editions, dotted around the globe   

07/11/2022 | First Cut Lab 2023

January proves the best month for Tribeca 2022

The film by Latvian director Viesturs Kairišs has won Best International Narrative Feature; other European victors include Woman on the Roof and We Might as Well Be Dead    

17/06/2022 | Tribeca 2022 | Awards

Urban Sales sets its sights on Cannes

The French sales agent is set to land on the Croisette brandishing Plan 75 , enjoying its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section, and Pink Moon , which was selected to compete in Tribeca   

29/04/2022 | Cannes 2022 | Marché du Film

European films to descend on the US East Coast for their Tribeca world premieres

The New York City-based gathering, whose mission is to introduce ground-breaking stories and emerging voices, will welcome a host of European productions across several sections   

20/04/2022 | Tribeca 2022

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When a young woman receives the absurd news from her father that he’s had enough of life and wants it to come to an end, she is forced to search for a way to deal with his last wish.

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By Anthony DeCurtis

Anthony DeCurtis

Pink Moon is folk icon Nick Drake ‘s third and last full album — and at less than 30 minutes, it can seem as starkly foreshortened as the singer’s life, which ended in 1974 when he was 26. But as one of Drake’s friends put it, “If something’s that intense, it can’t be measured in minutes.” Rousing himself out of one of the paralyzing depressions that plagued him in his last years, Drake recorded these 11 tracks in two nights, often in just one take. He accompanies himself only on acoustic guitar, except for the title track, on which he overdubs a brief, lovely piano part.

By the time of these sessions, Drake had retreated so deeply into his own internal world that it is difficult to say what the songs are “about.” His lyrics are so compressed as to be kind of folkloric haikus, almost childishly simple in their structure (“Which will you go for/Which will you love”) and elemental in their imagery (“And I was green, greener than the hill/ Where flowers grow and the sun shone still”). His voice conveys, in its moans and breathy whispers, an alluring sensuality, but he sings as if he were viewing his life from a great, unbridgeable distance. That element of detachment is chilling. To reinforce it, messages of isolation gradually float to the surface of the songs’ spare, eloquent melodies. “You can say the sun is shining if you really want to,” he sings on “Road,” as if daylight were merely a subjective perception that he could not summon the will to sustain. “I can see the moon and it seems so clear.” “I’m darker than the deepest sea,” he observes in “Place to Be.”

It makes unfortunate sense in this age of marketing that what has partially rescued Drake from a quarter-century of obscurity is neither the admiration of artists ranging from R.E.M. to Elton John nor the generations of critics who have sung his praises, but a Volkswagen ad . Lack of recognition in his lifetime deepened Drake’s constitutional despair and may well have contributed to his death from a (possibly intentional) drug overdose. He despised commercialism, of course, but let’s hope that wherever he is, he can at least enjoy the irony.

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Directed by Floor van der Meulen

Till your wish do us part

A young woman struggles to cope with her elderly father's out-of-the-blue announcement he considers his life complete and will end it by his next birthday.

Julia Akkermans Johan Leysen Eelco Smits Anniek Pheifer Sinem Kavus Mariana Aparicio Torres Glenn Coenen Ruben de Goede Gusta Geleijnse Jenny Hsia Urmie Plein Claire Schuyffel Bruno Prent Jaap Spijkers Ama Tarenskeen Jolanda van den Berg Martijn van der Veen Loek Willemsen Sara Luna Zoric

Director Director

Floor van der Meulen

Producers Producers

Koji Nelissen Derk-Jan Warrink Jožko Rutar Miha Černec Marina Blok

Writer Writer

Bastiaan Kroeger

Casting Casting

Marina Wijn

Editor Editor

Mieneke Kramer

Cinematography Cinematography

Emo Weemhoff

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Pascalle Kleingeld

Production Design Production Design

Sound sound.

Oliver Pattinama Vincent Sinceretti

Costume Design Costume Design

Monica Petit

Makeup Makeup

Trudy Buren

Keplerfilm Staragara Tramal Films NTR

Netherlands

Primary language, spoken languages.

English Dutch

Alternative Titles

粉月亮, Różowy księżyc, 不跟爸爸說再見, Růžový měsíc, Rožnata luna

Releases by Date

13 jun 2022, 15 oct 2022, 08 sep 2022, 06 oct 2023, releases by country.

• Premiere Jakarta Film Week

95 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by yungtruckerboy ★★★★

Stel je voor je gaat dood en je laatste maaltijd is kwark

Review by chuzen ★★★ 2

-why? -i told you, i'm done living.

the melancholy of a final goodbye - even when expected, stings no less, though perhaps even more. time is never enough; no amount of preparation can ease the sorrow. but if there is any comfort from the inevitability of the  pink moon  which comes for us all, it is that we have had a chance for one last farewell, and a semblance of closure which we will desperately need.  we grieve because we love, and this is why we say goodbye.

- you need to let me go

Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★ 1

in a weird way, this is the Dutch answer to Bulworth - which means it's very strange and very funny, though the latter depends on how morbid you happen to be; favorite one sheet art of the year so far, too

Review by al pacino ★★★½

Pink Moon gives a voice to those older folks who might want to keep their lives under their own control before it is too late and they’re too old to avoid a painful death in the future. it’s a complicated question,  the film tries to ask you.

Review by Nathan Armer ★★★★★

That hangover meal of a medium coffee and 2 buckets of KFC chicken must have gone straight to my heart.

This is just an incredibly warm story about family members at different stages of life discovering whether, why, and for how long they want to live.

The last 15 minutes are a one-take marvel.

I loved it completely, and it feels destined for an Oscar-bait remake starring Brie Larson and Robert De Niro in 2 or 3 years.

Review by ZacharyBinx ★★★★½

Tribeca@Home 2022

Floor van der Meulen's first narrative feature is stunning visually and emotionally. Two adult siblings have to come to terms with their father's desire to die before his body starts to deteriorate. It's a familiar plot at this point mostly because it's still illegal in a majority of countries. But Pink Moon has a fluidity and grace to it that's undeniable.

First, the camerawork is impeccable. It's a beautiful house with some awe-inspiring exterior shots but the camera glides with ease, often in long takes that give it a dreamlike quality.

Second, the performances of all three leads were tremendous. Navigating through an emotional minefield with humor, sincerity, and a bit of clumsiness. Julia Akkermans hits it out…

Review by gabby ★★★★½

incredible execution and handling of such a delicate and dark topic!

Review by Luca ★★★★

Slachtstraat stond blank door m'n tranen

Review by ericjliddle ★★★½

I saw this in the cinema waiting patiently for Pink Moon by Nick Drake to play and as an hour and 35 minutes went by I was left disappointed. The film itself made up for it though, an intimate and heartwarming dramedy about a subject that isn’t talked often enough given how intriguing it is.

Review by Haiku Dan ★★★★

wow, what an ending. a tough but rewarding watch. where does the time go?

Review by Iqbal Riz ★★★★

Pernah gak lu kepikiran pas lagi ngumpul keluarga terus ayahlu tiba-tiba ngasih tau kalo di hari ulang tahunnya nanti bakal jadi hari terakhirnya hidup alias mau mengakhiri hidupnya karena ngerasa di hidupnya udah dapetin semua yang diiginkan dan gak ada lagi target serta tujuan ke depannya, sekaligus ingin mengurangi beban anak-anaknya agar tidak perlu repot-repot ngurusin lagi. Nah lo bingung kan...

dan ternyata di hari gw nonton ini, 12 November, coba tebak hari apa...

#JakartaWorldCinemaWeek2023

Review by Neon_Dreamer 🎞️ ★★★★ 2

| GERMAN ORIGINAL

The film "Pink Moon" is a story of farewell and a tribute to life.

SYNOPSIS: "Pink Moon" is a drama directed by Floor van der Meulen, starring Julia Akkermans, Johan Leysen, and Eelco Smits.

When Iris unexpectedly learns that her father, Jan, has had enough of life and wants to die, she is forced to come to terms with the absurdity of the situation. As the fateful date approaches, Iris decides to ignore her brother's foolproof action plan and persuade her father to answer the question that is important to her: Why?

OPINION: Director Floor van der Meulen, born in 1989, studied Audiovisual Design in Rotterdam and New York. Her documentaries and TV productions have received international…

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When a young woman receives the absurd news from her father that he’s had enough of life and wants it to come to an end, she is forced to search for a way to deal with his last wish.

• Single Issues
• Digital Editions

A deep dive into Nick Drake’s legendary final album, Pink Moon

Nick Drake’s Pink Moon is 50 this month. To celebrate, we've assembled friends, peers and acolytes – including Richard Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Mark Eitzel, Joan Shelley and Joe Boyd – to explore favourite songs from the visionary singer-songwriter’s starkly beautiful swansong. Which will you love the best?

Trending Now

Stephen malkmus’ the hard quartet announce debut album, hear panda bear & sonic boom’s reset mariachi ep, horace panter – my life in music, dorothy carter – troubadour (reissue, 1976), el khat – mute.

During the small hours of October 30, 1971, and again the following night, Nick Drake entered Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea to record his third, and final, album. Pink Moon was a quiet revolt. While Drake’s first two albums, Five Leaves Left (1969) and Bryter Layter (1971), were lush, orchestrated, beautifully arranged, Pink Moon was stripped bare. The only person present other than Drake during the sessions was Sound Techniques owner and engineer John Wood . Save for a brief, simple piano overdub on the title track, the album featured just Drake’s voice and guitar. The 11 songs spanned a mere 28 minutes. To describe Pink Moon as stark is to undersell its radical minimalism.

• ORDER NOW:  Read the full interview in the latest issue of Uncut

“ Five Leaves Left was very easy,” recalls Joe Boyd , who signed Drake to his Witchseason roster in 1968 and produced the first two records. “ Bryter Layter was more rushed and Nick and I clashed over his vision. He had this idea that each side would start and end with an instrumental. I felt it was a bit MOR. The moment Bryter Layter was done, Nick turned to me and said, ‘I’m going to do my next album with just guitar and voice.’ I took it as a rebuke.”

In the 50 years since its release on February 25, 1972, Pink Moon has slowly become one of the most mythologised records of the 20th century. It has become synonymous with Drake’s decline and death, on November 25, 1974, aged 26, from an overdose of antidepressants. It is hard to unravel its sadness from the sadness of his life – yet the album is also luminous, uncannily beautiful, limitless in its scale and scope.

Though commercially unsuccessful at the time, Pink Moon wasn’t released into a void. Island Records pushed the LP with full-page ads in the music weeklies and it was widely reviewed. There was a sense, however, that critics had tired of Drake’s reticence. His reluctance to play live was already notorious, and the unvarnished sound of the record seemed a further act of wilful self-sabotage. “Maybe it’s time Mr Drake stopped acting so mysteriously and started getting something properly organised for himself,” snapped Jerry Gilbert , previously a champion of Drake , in Sounds.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, fly me to the moon.

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“Fly Me to the Moon” lurches wildly from zippy, retro rom-com to cynical political satire to weighty, remorseful drama and back again. Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti ’s film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum , who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other. 

Johansson is especially charismatic here as  Kelly Jones , a late-’60s ad executive who gets plucked from a Manhattan agency to sell the space program to the American people. She’s Don Draper in a pink pencil skirt – and all hail costume designer Mary Zophres, the longtime Coen brothers' collaborator, who has amassed a truly dazzling array of mid-century chic ensembles for these actors to wear. The shadowy government figure who approaches Kelly in a bar about the gig ( Woody Harrelson , playfully menacing in a fedora) comments on how useful her beauty is in her line of work. But her ability to read people and figure out what makes them tick makes her even more formidable.  

Watching Kelly transform herself from one moment to the next into whoever she needs to be to get her way provides the primary source of joy in Berlanti’s film, based on a screenplay by Rose Gilroy . Is she a compulsive liar? Perhaps. But she’s also extremely good at her job. 

Which is why her supposed romantic connection with Tatum’s launch director Cole Davis makes no sense, beyond the fact that these are both inordinately gorgeous people. Kelly and Cole meet cute one night in the neon glow of a Cocoa Beach, Florida, diner; the next day, they have an awkward moment straight out of “ Top Gun ” when they realize they’ll be forced to work together. But Cole wants no part of Kelly’s shenanigans; a brilliant pilot who should have been an astronaut himself, he’s all business, and he remains consumed by the tragedy of Apollo 1 even as the Apollo 11 moon mission looms large on the horizon. He's kind of a drag.

Snappy banter is crucial to this kind of screwball romantic comedy. “Fly Me to the Moon” aims for the kind of sparks we’ve enjoyed in all those  Rock Hudson and Doris Day  classics. Here, it often feels like Johansson and Tatum are in entirely different movies. She’s effervescent and fearless; he’s stoic and apprehensive. Interestingly, Chris Evans originally was meant to play Cole, and would have been a much better fit, only partly because he and Johansson are longtime friends in real life. There’s a lightness required here that Tatum can’t seem to summon, although that's also because it's missing on the page. And later in the film, when Kelly and Cole sit down to reveal their demons to each other, the movie grinds to a halt for these tedious exposition dumps. 

Cole would be particularly irate to learn that part of Kelly’s assignment includes hiring a director and actors to fake the moon landing on a soundstage in case the real one fails. This, of course, has been a conspiracy theory for decades, including the notion that Stanley Kubrick himself was at the helm – the inspiration for a couple of flat, throwaway jokes here.  Jim Rash chews up the scenery as a wildly flamboyant but frustrated filmmaker who finally gets the chance to show off his artistry, even if no one can know about it. He definitely knows what movie he’s in – or at least, what movie this could have been. 

From here, “Fly Me to the Moon” gets bogged down in multiple endings, with a back-and-forth as to what’s real and what’s fake that eventually becomes jumbled. It keeps going and going past what might have been a natural conclusion, spelling out motivations and developments that would have been more intriguing if they’d been left to our imagination. Berlanti’s movie is far more effective as an upbeat farce than a poignant drama, and at well over two hours, the last 30 minutes or so feel like an eternity.  

Capable supporting players like Ray Romano and Anna Garcia can only do so much through all these highs and lows with the thin characters they’re given. And Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” – who happens to be Johansson’s husband – is truly terrible in the briefest of cameos as a senator she’s trying to woo for his support. It’s such a hammy performance, though, that it almost seems intentional. 

Still, this scene is indicative of the confusion that serves as the film’s wobbly throughline. Is this a comedy or a drama? Is it nostalgia or historical critique? Things keep catching on fire amid the chaos of “Fly Me to the Moon,” and maybe that’s the most apt metaphor of all. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Rated PG-13

132 minutes

Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Jones

Channing Tatum as Cole Davis

Woody Harrelson as Moe Berkus

Jim Rash as Lance Vespertine

Ray Romano as Henry Smalls

• Greg Berlanti
• Rose Gilroy

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