Danish cinema is going from strength to strength, and is consequently attracting a strong following internationally. Some of this revitalisation came from Lars Von Trier and his pared down Dogme movement. Director Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, Brother) taps the spirit of Dogme, but takes it to the next level. She continues to work with her regular producer Sisse Graum Jorgensen and actor/writer Anders Thomas Jensen, and the positive effects of this sense of teamwork have been building consistently from project to project.
It is the fascinating set ups and coiled-spring moral dilemmas that provide the tension at the centre of their work. In After The Wedding, Jacob (the wonderful Mads Mikkelsen, who made his name internationally as the bad guy in Casino Royale) is an idealist ex-hippy who has been running an orphanage in India. When he goes back to Denmark on the prospect of getting funding from businessman Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard), he finds himself embroiled in a contemporary dilemma which connects painfully and inescapably with buried aspects of his past.
In many Danish films, large country houses and big bourgeois families have been a favourite setting, though the backdrops are distancing, with the emotional focus very much up front, and invariably acted with gut wrenching verisimilitude. After The Wedding follows suit, and we just know that the film’s big family occasion is going to be disrupted by a terrible truth. The film never needs to strain for emotional effect because the completely naturalistic acting and the terrible, but immediately recognisable, moral paradoxes are likely to call forth a strong reaction in all of us. It makes for uncomfortable but riveting viewing.
Driven by its honest, naturalistic performances and intense sense of realism, After The Wedding is both instantly familiar in its dilemmas and unforgettable in its drama.
Filmink 4/5
