“In Lili Rademakers' first feature, Minuet, the narrative dance is performed by three people: a husband, a wife, and a precocious young housekeeper. The introverted husband divides his time between a job at the brewery and two hobbies--collecting wildflowers and amassing bizarre newspaper clippings. Self-absorbed, the wife becomes involved in an affair which leaves her devastated. The young housekeeper, aware of the man's attraction to her and of the woman's clandestine liaison, provokes them both. Alternately amusing and disquieting, Minuet records an interaction in which the partners shift from day to day and level to level.
“Rademakers, who assisted Fellini on La Dolce Vita, considers character development the central concern of Minuet: ‘The wife's personality, at first the least complex of the three, attracted me particularly; she represents for me the duality found in many women: the combination of a consciousness of self and of sexual submission. But I am equally intrigued by the lie of the husband and his existential anxiety in which feelings only really exist in his own unconscious, where they take the form of “visions". As for the girl, I was once a girl that age!'” Laura Thielen