HOLLAND, Mich. — The season's first tulips won't bloom here for another month, but this west Michigan town was able to celebrate its moment in the sun this week during the hometown premiere of the new Hollywood thriller bearing its name.

"Holland," starring Nicole Kidman, played to a spirited sold-out crowd Monday at Hope College's 500-seat Knickerbocker Theatre in the center of the city's downtown. Kidman didn't make the trek, but the film's director, Mimi Cave, was on hand, as was the town's mayor, as were a lot of curious Hollanders, who were ready to see their city depicted on the big screen.

"Everybody's excited, everybody's been sharing the trailer on Facebook," said Sarah Schemper, who attended the free screening with her husband, Greg.

They've been residents of this "safe, small town" with its proud Dutch ancestry for nearly 20 years. "It's quirky here," said Greg Schemper, a teacher at Holland Christian High School, "but it's also tight-knit, and we care about each other."

"Holland" plays up those quirks, as well as the city's tight-knit, small-town feel.

Kidman plays Nancy Vandergroot, a home economics teacher at Holland High School who suspects her husband, Fred ("Succession's" Matthew Macfadyen), might be cheating on her.

While investigating his potential infidelity, she enlists the help of a fellow teacher, Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal), and together they uncover some deeply hidden secrets, while Nancy crosses marital lines with infidelity of her own. The darkly comic mystery is available to stream beginning Thursday on Amazon Prime Video.

At Monday's screening, tickets for which were snatched up in two hours, shots of Holland's historic De Zwaan windmill drew huge cheers, references to the city's Tulip Time festival and to neighboring communities got big laughs, and the audience was audibly on board with the story's many twists and turns.

The hometown crowd made for "the best screening I've seen of this film," said JC Molina, "Holland's" production designer. And that wasn't just because after the screening, he and Cave were both gifted a bouquet of tulips by Mayor Nathan Bocks.

The story of "Holland" — once titled "Holland, Michigan" — dates back more than a decade.

In 2013, its Andrew Sodroski-penned script topped the Black List, Hollywood's annual roundup of its best unproduced screenplays. At one point, it was set to go into production with Bryan Cranston and Naomi Watts in the lead roles.

When that iteration of the film fell apart, Amazon acquired the rights to the story, and Kidman eventually came on board as a producer and star. Kidman took the film to Cave, who was fresh off her 2022 cannibal thriller "Fresh" at the time.

Cave, who grew up outside of Chicago in St. Charles, Illinois, felt her Midwest upbringing gave her an insight into the world of "Holland."

"The characters are relatable," said Cave, during an interview before the premiere at Hope College's Haworth Hotel, just a block from the Knickerbocker. "It's not too different from the suburb I grew up in, it's not that far away. So it felt like I knew these people already."

Cave, 41, made a half-dozen trips to Holland during pre-production for the film, getting to know the city, its style and its characteristics. She and Molina spent time with locals, including lifelong Holland residents Elizabeth and Michael Israels, who acted as on-the-ground ambassadors to the filmmakers and helped them get to know the ins and outs of Holland.

"They came to our house, we sat in our kitchen, and we bought some Dutch food for them to try," said Elizabeth Israels, who attended Monday's screening. She said their meeting lasted several hours, and they discussed everything from the town's history to its ethnicity to its relationship with tulips.

When residents were curious as to how the movie would depict their city, "we would explain to them, 'it's in the world of 'Fargo,'" said Cave, who made the film in 2023. "It's set in Holland, but we're not saying anything negative about Holland."

She was set on shooting "Holland" in Michigan, but the state's lack of tax incentives for film productions made it financially unfeasible. Most of the movie wound up shooting in Clarksville, Tennessee, northwest of Nashville and close to the Kentucky border, although Cave did shoot in Holland for three days, including a scene that was rewritten to take place inside the town's windmill. Kidman and Bernal's characters discuss their plan inside the landmark, which was brought to Holland from the Netherlands in 1964.

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time's executive director, said "Holland" filmmakers reached out to her team and members of the community for guidance on traditional Dutch dancing and costuming for the film's sequence set during the festival's annual parade.

Plans to shoot during the Tulip Time parade fell apart due to logistics, in part due to the film's period setting — it takes place in the year 2000, which would have required a full-scale makeover on a lot of the downtown buildings.

"In a way, I think it may have been better," said Cave, who noted the scale of the production might have taken away from the actual Tulip Time parade. "It's hard to bring in that much stuff and not have it be a disruption."

Molina, who grew up in Northern California, says he came away from his "Holland" experience with a warm appreciation for the town, its residents, and its heritage.

"What a beautiful, bizarre, fascinating little town," he said. "I've never seen this level of pride in a culture — I'm Mexican-American, so that's a very difficult culture, but it's the same amount of pride, but for the Dutch. It's amazing."

Bocks is beaming with pride, both for the town where he serves and the potential of the new movie.

Bocks, who became mayor in 2020 and still holds down a full-time job as an attorney (he had client appointments all day Monday), said when he got wind the movie was coming to town, "I made a note to the production crew that if Nicole Kidman needed a leading man that I was available," he said. "Apparently, they didn't need me."

All jokes aside, he said he did audition to play a tour guide in the movie but didn't get the part. "They said they needed someone who faded into the background a little bit more than me."

Bocks said Holland, which will host between 600,000 and 1 million visitors during May's Tulip Time festival, "is one of those communities that actually has a personality, which is, I think, one of the reasons the movie's here."

He saw the movie a few weeks ago — he said he considered going to Austin, Texas, this month for the film's South by Southwest world premiere, but flights were too pricey — and said he's been telling folks who may be concerned about the town's depiction in the film that it's not a documentary. "It takes place here, but it's not about us," he said.

At Monday's event, Bocks posed for pictures underneath the Knickerbocker marquee with Cave and Molina, as well as community members who came dressed in traditional Dutch garb. During an introduction to the screening, he riffed on one of the lines Kidman's character says in the movie: "Every morning, we get to wake up in the best place on Earth," he said. "They got to make a movie about Holland, Michigan, but we get to live here."

He then presented Cave with a custom pair of wooden shoes, which included logos of the city, the movie and this year's Tulip Time festival.

Critics have been tough on the film, which so far has earned a scant 37% fresh score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Much of the criticism comes from some of its third-act plot developments.

But it got good marks from the audience on Monday.

"It was fun, very entertaining. I laughed a lot," Holland resident Charlie Mosterd said after the screening. His wife, Leah, said she enjoyed the specificity of its storytelling, but wondered how well some of its details would translate for those outside the Holland bubble.

Inside the bubble, Bocks said it's important that Hollanders have a sense of humor about themselves, and said he feels the town gets a fair shake in the movie.

"It makes Holland look very good," he said. "I've said to folks who are concerned, I've said listen, this is an amazing community. Anybody who watches the movie and might think anything bad, come. Come here, stay here for an hour, you will be won over.

"This is an absolutely fantastic community, and I cherish the opportunity for people to come to Holland and see what we're like. And if this movie brings people to the community? All the better."

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'HOLLAND'

MPA rating: R (for some bloody violence, language and brief sexuality)

Running time: 1:08

How to watch: premieres Thursday on Amazon Prime Video

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