A plot of plausible and unpredictable twists.
Herald rating: * * * *
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgard, Sidse Babett Knudsen
Director: Susanne Bier
Running time: 120 mins
Rating: M, offensive language
Screening: Academy, Matakana
Verdict: Potent Danish drama of skeletons falling out of family closets is occasionally deliberate but mostly mesmerising
If you remember
Open Hearts and Brothers, the earlier features by this Danish writer-director, you'll know what to expect here: a meaty, brilliantly written human drama that is what a soap opera would be like if you put it on steroids.
Jacob (Mikkelsen, the blood-weeping villain of the last Bond film) is an aid worker in India whose permanently lugubrious face signals some deep past discontent. He receives a summons from a zillionaire industrialist Jorgen (Lassgard) who is offering a fortune to Jacob's orphanage. The catch is that he has to go home, for the first time in 20 years, to receive the money in person.
The man he meets is hiding several secrets, none of which I'll let slip here. But it is to Bier's credit that she lets us catch on at exactly the same rate Jacob does. The plot's twists are plausible and unpredictable and you are likely to enjoy working out what happened as you drive home.
Bier maintains the tension cleverly, both by filming in an eerily empty Copenhagen and by the repeated use of extreme close-ups that draw us into a discomfiting sense of intimacy with the characters. It's appropriate to the subject matter as it turns out; intimacy is unwelcome when it's unexpected and enforced.
There's perhaps a slightly deliberate, even formulaic feel to this film, compared with the bracingly verite style of the others, Open Hearts in particular. Jorgen's ruthless son-in-law is something of a cliche and the insert shots of dead animals are a mannered touch for a woman whose work is normally notably free of them.
But this is nonetheless a top-notch piece of work by a director whose richly authentic dramas are regular inclusions in festival programmes.
