The Debut (1977)

The Debut is van Brakel's first-length movies as a director, and it too takes up the theme of a child growing up in an adult world. Caroline is a 14-year old whose first love is 40-year old Hugo, a friend of her parent's who just returned from Africa with his wife. The spontaneous attraction the two feel for each other when they meet develops as they enter into a strange relationshop, the somewhat staid Hugo seeling to find some of his lost youth in the impulsive young girl enrhralled with the discovery of ther womanhood and the attention she receives from the devoted older man. In a kind of idyllic isolation they pursue their fragile liason, but the inevitable intrustions of friends, parents and Hugo's wife soon confronts their love with the reality of their ultimately separate worlds.
With the aid of fhe excellent cinematography of Theo van de Sande, Nouchka van Brakel builds up through close attention to detail a portrait of the sharp intelligence of a young woman coming into her own.