Marieke, Marieke — story and synopsis

Logline

A 20-year-old woman escapes into relationships with older men until a book editor arrives searching for her late father’s final manuscript-forcing her and her mother to confront a past they have tried to keep buried.

Full synopsis

Marieke is 20. She lives in Brussels with her mother, Jeanne, in a home that feels emotionally sealed. Her father is dead, but his absence isn’t processed; it is managed. Conversations don’t go there. Grief has turned into rules, and rules have turned into distance. Marieke grows up inside that distance, learning to keep moving without asking for comfort.

During the day, she works at a chocolate factory. The job is repetitive and physical, a kind of structure that keeps her upright. It gives her a schedule, an identity, and a reason to pretend she is “fine.” But at night Marieke slips into a private pattern: she seeks intimacy with much older men. It is not shown as glamour, and it is not framed as a simple scandal. It functions like a coping system-controlled, predictable, and emotionally safer than real closeness with people her own age.

The fragile balance changes when Jacoby arrives. He is a book editor living abroad, and he is looking for Marieke’s late father’s last manuscript. At first the request sounds practical-find a text, settle an estate, close a chapter. But Jeanne reacts as if a door has been kicked open. She tries to keep Jacoby away from Marieke, blocks meetings, and insists that the past should remain closed. Her refusal is not just protective; it feels like fear. The manuscript is not merely paper-it is proof, memory, and a threat.

Marieke refuses to stay inside her mother’s silence. She meets Jacoby anyway, pulled by curiosity and by a hunger she has never been allowed to name: the need to know who her father really was and what, exactly, her family has been hiding. Their connection grows complicated. Jacoby offers attention and stability, but he also demands answers. For Marieke, he becomes both a refuge and a mirror-someone who makes her feel seen, and someone who forces her to look at the parts of her life she keeps compartmentalized.

As the search for the manuscript moves forward, Marieke’s coping strategies start to crack. The film’s tension comes from this collapse: the point where escape stops being relief and starts being a trap. Jeanne’s control tightens. Marieke’s need for truth sharpens. And the story becomes less about “finding the manuscript” and more about deciding what kind of life Marieke is willing to live once the past is no longer buried.

Main characters

• Marieke
  A young woman who survives through routine and controlled intimacy. She is not naïve-she is adapting-but her adaptations carry a cost.

• Jeanne
  Marieke’s mother. Grief has hardened into distance and control. She believes silence is protection, even when it becomes harm.

• Jacoby
  A book editor searching for the late father’s manuscript. He enters with a professional goal and becomes the trigger for a family confrontation.

What the story is really about

Under the surface, this is a film about substitutes: substituting routine for safety, substituting controlled intimacy for connection, substituting silence for healing. The story asks a blunt question without preaching: when your survival habits become your identity, how do you change without losing yourself?

The Brussels setting supports that realism. The city feels lived-in and practical-workplaces, streets, apartments-spaces where people keep moving even when they are emotionally stuck. That everyday pressure is what makes the story hit: it feels like something that could be happening next door.