GENRE: Comedy

DIRECTOR: Giles Foster

SCREENPLAY: Williams Boyd

PRODUCERS: Sue Birthwistle, Nick Elliott for LWT [Colin must have made a lasting impression on the producer Sue Birthwistle, because she was very determined to cast Colin as Darcy in Pride and Prejudice some ten years later.]

PRIMARY CAST: Colin Firth [Niel Truelove], Timothy Spall [Lyndon], Bill Paterson [Mole], James Wilby [Dundine], Gusta Gerritsen [Romelia], Adrian Lukis [Murray] et al.

Colin Firth and Timothy Spall in Dutch Girls. [Cine Mix Photo Album]

ABOUT THE FILM: A team of schoolboys goes to Holland to participate in a sports tournament but cannot take their minds of the Dutch Girls.

TRIVIA: The swedish director Ingmar Bergman's daugther Anna Bergman has a small role as an Amsterdam prostitute who takes the boys' money and dissapear.

Colin about the danger of getting typecast as "public schoolboy" after his success in Another Country:
I was given the sort of English public schoolboy stamp. It got me my first and second and third jobs. Very high-profile stuff. I was delighted to get them, and then there comes a point when you think 'but I can't keep doing this.'

I'm not that - I'm not a public schoolboy, you know. I went to secondary school. I went to the worst type of English schools, and, uh, I didn't talk this way as a schoolboy - I spoke with my regional dialect.

In what way can Colin relate to Truelove?
I was at a boys' school most of my life for a start. I just didn't know any women through most of my teens. Later it was hard to relate to women. I was afraid of them. I thought they were another species at first. I thought there had to be a completely different approach with talking to a woman.

I was very envious of the boys at school that did know girls of our own age and seemed to be able to talk with them without spluttering. I watched this incredible confidence from some of the others and uh, would imitate them and would end up sounding petulant and ridiculous and not impressing anybody.

Then I was probably ludicrously polite and gentlemanly for a while. Which I think didn't go badly but it certainly was a while before I realised women was just human beings. [Attitude, April 1997]

VIDEO: the odd NTSC video is said to be available