As smooth as an eel: the truly dramatic sex life of… the eel

Anyone who thinks that an eel is mainly that fat, winding thing in the ditches nearby is wrong. We are dealing here with a mysterious world traveler, who also makes his or her world trip for a sad, sad and fatal sex life. Really and truly.

This is evident from Palingdans, a documentary film that can be seen in cinemas from tomorrow. During these European Football Championship weeks, not the biggest films will appear on the silver screen, so Metro chose two special topics for the Film Review of the Week.

Last week it was about organizing the first multi-day pop festival in Europe (Holland Pop in Rotterdam, you don’t know what you see); this time it is, yes, the eel. An everyday fish for all of us, because you can catch it and it is available at the supermarket and the fishmonger. But oh, how little we know about that little ‘snake’ with two eyes and a mouth.

If we are to believe the approximately 45-minute Palingdans, we know more about the universe than about the eel, so to speak. Director Hans Dortmans tries to teach the cinema-goer a little more about this elusive animal. Dortmans has already made numerous documentaries, the best known of which is perhaps Goddelijk Varken, a story about a pig and a butcher.

Eel Dance is an ode to the eel with never-before-seen underwater images. In short, what the film is mainly about: how do these animals actually mate? Nobody knows that and according to Palingdans this has been an unanswered question since Aristoles (that philosopher practiced himself stupidly about 2400 years ago).

This Metro film viewer must have fished a palinkie out of the water as a child. My father probably took that creepy little thing off the hook, I don’t remember. What I do know: it swims around in our waters and if you catch it you can, for example, stew or smoke it and then eat it. Nice snack, that’s for sure.

But brace yourself. What scientists have also known for about a hundred years is that eels go on sexual journeys to mate. He and she are willing to do anything, because the swim to the couple’s paradise (from the Netherlands) is easily about 6,000 kilometers! It has to happen somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean. But how? No one knows how eelhatse flats will go. Is there ogling? Will there still be dirty nonsense for a while? Up and about? No idea. Apparently the expression ‘as smooth as an eel’ is there for a reason. We still have no control over (the sex life of) the eel.

What we do know is tragic, deeply deeply tragic. After the deed and laying eggs, mom and dad eel die. So you swim thousands of miles for that one time in your life… and then die. The eel probably doesn’t know that, otherwise you wouldn’t undertake such a hellish journey. And no one tells Mr. and Mrs. Eel either, because no eel returns after mating to announce it. The film also features a 94-year-old eel chef in his Japanese kitchen. He does think that the eel has known its fatal fate from birth. “Otherwise they won’t swim in the right direction.”

What we also know about the eel: after the death of the parents, larvae remain. They float back to our waters, among other places. Once they get there, they are glass eels. And they then become an eel again and then… die or be eaten by hungry humans.

A joker will say: “If an eel doesn’t die during that one time of sex, it has a good chance of being caught by a fisherman from Volendam. And then it ends up there in a fish stall, while the fishmonger might be blasting Nick & Simon or Jan Smit from his speakers. Well great.” By the way, the Metro writer has some Volendam blood, so I can say it with a wink.

Enough winking, because Eel Dance is quite a serious film. To be honest, it jumps around quite a bit to completely different topics. The viewer sees the expedition ship Walter Herwig III with an Austrian biologist. He wants to catch eel eggs in the Atlantic Ocean and study eel larvae. We see biologist Rick Leemans active in, of course, Volendam. There, the De Glasaal laboratory is trying to breed glass eels and thus do something about the eel population that is in danger. Because well, they die having sex or we eat them. That doesn’t make any sense, of course.

And then there is the Japanese Kenichi Ikeda. He has become completely captivated by the mysterious animal and now finds it the tastiest food he can think of. Ikeda struggles with his conscience: if he continues to eat like this, he will also contribute to the extinction of his beloved eel.

Perhaps the subject of this article, that sex journey, is even more fun than the entire film put together. However, it remains intriguing. Eel will never be the same after seeing Eel Dance, if you didn’t know anything about it beforehand. When you take a bite of that pathetic murdered fish on a piece of toast, it just crosses your mind that this fish has missed sex the only time in his or her life.

Note: interesting, but is it good food for the cinema or an art house? Nice to broadcast on TV on NPO 2, I would say. Palingdans fits in well there.

You can read Metro’s Film Review of the Week on Wednesday evening. New titles usually appear in Dutch cinemas on Thursdays (such as Palingdans), sometimes on Wednesdays. Reporter Erik Jonk chooses the films. Next week there will be a real cinema film, The Bikeriders about a motorcycle club in the late sixties. Motorcycle clubs have a particularly bad name these days, but wasn’t that the case in the past?