I have become a fan of Bier's work. "After the wedding" and "Brothers" were engrossing "relationship" movies fraught with emotion, crackling dialog and unpredictable twists. This one starts with a shock. A man who has just proposed to his lover is run over by a car and paralyzed for life. We've been here before. The question is where does Bier take it? True to her fashion she takes it off on a tangent that essentially sidelines the initial plot line.
Cecilli, the female lover is rejected by her paralyzed fiancée, who implodes into self hate and loss and takes it out on the people who try to take care of him. This is of course not uncommon, especially for males. Hating their dependency and helplessness they attack those who inadvertently rub this helplessness in, simply by being caretakers. Cecillia finds solace with a Doctor in the hospital, but in this case he's the husband of the woman who ran down her lover! This is where the movie goes off into another area, and while that area is fascinating and difficult to watch - adultery, bad ethics, stupidity, and moral cowardice - it leaves completely behind one vital part of the movie and that is the emotional state of the wife who caused the accident!
Bier chooses to focus instead on the triangle of the Doctor: Niels (played by Mads Mikkelsen from after the wedding) Cecillia, and the Doctor's daughter who was in the car driven by her mother and feels she is the cause of the crash, because she was arguing with her mother. The daughter, Stine, seems to read her father better than the wife, and is on to his infidelity from the start while the wife allows herself to be talked out of it by a mendacious Niels. If Bier is trying to show us that the wife is shunted aside because she is out of touch emotionally it isn't portrayed in any convincing fashion.
The script, as usual, is the key here. It is the dialog that keeps the movie interesting. The people come off as humans engaged in the difficult job of life. No-one is heroic, and no-one is atrocious, merely emotionally selfish. Cecillia for seducing a married man in order to feel wanted, and Niels for caving to his mid life urges at the expense of his family.
I eagerly await Bier's foray into Hollywood with her movie about racism (Halle Berry and David Duchovny.)
Cecilli, the female lover is rejected by her paralyzed fiancée, who implodes into self hate and loss and takes it out on the people who try to take care of him. This is of course not uncommon, especially for males. Hating their dependency and helplessness they attack those who inadvertently rub this helplessness in, simply by being caretakers. Cecillia finds solace with a Doctor in the hospital, but in this case he's the husband of the woman who ran down her lover! This is where the movie goes off into another area, and while that area is fascinating and difficult to watch - adultery, bad ethics, stupidity, and moral cowardice - it leaves completely behind one vital part of the movie and that is the emotional state of the wife who caused the accident!
Bier chooses to focus instead on the triangle of the Doctor: Niels (played by Mads Mikkelsen from after the wedding) Cecillia, and the Doctor's daughter who was in the car driven by her mother and feels she is the cause of the crash, because she was arguing with her mother. The daughter, Stine, seems to read her father better than the wife, and is on to his infidelity from the start while the wife allows herself to be talked out of it by a mendacious Niels. If Bier is trying to show us that the wife is shunted aside because she is out of touch emotionally it isn't portrayed in any convincing fashion.
The script, as usual, is the key here. It is the dialog that keeps the movie interesting. The people come off as humans engaged in the difficult job of life. No-one is heroic, and no-one is atrocious, merely emotionally selfish. Cecillia for seducing a married man in order to feel wanted, and Niels for caving to his mid life urges at the expense of his family.
I eagerly await Bier's foray into Hollywood with her movie about racism (Halle Berry and David Duchovny.)