The Danish Woman sounds a little like A Man On The Inside. It’s not, in more ways than one. Instead of Ted Danson’s charming and occasionally fumbling retired professor discovering life undercover, we have the opposite: Trine Dyrholm (The Girl with the Needle, Queen of Hearts) plays a driven and resourceful former spy moving to Iceland, in search of a quiet anonymity, after retiring from the Danish Secret Service.
Dyrholm (who’s sometimes described as Denmark’s Meryl Streep, a nod not only to her looks but also her impressive CV, studded with complex roles) is perfectly suited to this twisting, unpredictable Nordic drama.
Where Danson’s professor made friends and learned how to be a spy, Dyrholm’s retired agent, Ditte Jensen, cannot let go. Soon she’s meddling in her neighbour’s problems, trying to take over the apartment block’s managing committee, dealing with an unexpected visit from her old comrades from the secret service, and having a run-in with Icelandic organised crime.
Complicating her move from Denmark to Iceland is the history between the two countries (after the dissolution of the Kalmar Union in 1523, Iceland fell under Danish rule. Iceland gained sovereignty in 1918, and formally severed ties with Denmark’s monarchy in 1944, becoming a republic). That history – and the assumptions that sometimes go with it – makes an appearance early in the first episode, when Ditte is speaking to a group of children who live in her apartment. They ask why she doesn’t speak Icelandic. “I’ve just moved to Iceland,” she replies. Fair enough. But then she questions them about why they are happier to speak in English to her, rather than Danish. “But don’t you speak Danish? Don’t you learn it in school? …. you should be able to speak Danish here in Iceland. You were once Danish? Right?”.
If you are getting the feeling that her plan for a quiet retirement is going to face some challenges, you’d be right. And we’re not just talking about the two men watching her through binoculars from a nearby car.
Jensen cannot stop being who she is: a soldier who feels the ends justifies the means. (Fair warning: this really isn’t A Man on The Inside. Ditte is not afraid to
get her hands dirty, for better or for worse.)
Award-winning Icelandic director, writer and actor Benedikt Erlingsson (Woman at War, Of Horses and Men), series director and co-writer for The Danish Woman, draws parallels between the retired spy and Odysseus and even Rambo.
“So... First off, The Danish Woman is based on a well-known theme – or a cliché. The often-told story of the ‘Returning Warrior’.
“This metaphorical narrative frame can be traced all the way back to Homer - at least. It's the story of Odysseus who returns home to Ithakan and finds the suitors in his palace. He kills them all and in doing so nearly starts a new war. This story can also be found in more recent examples, for instance in Sylvester Stallone's film Rambo. A soldier returns home from the Vietnam war and... You know the rest.
“But here we have ‘the Danish woman. Firstly, she is a ‘Foreign element’ that joins the community of a small apartment building in Reykjavík. She is the new neighbour. But she is more than that. Being Danish has a meaning in an Icelandic context. She belongs to the old master race, the teachers of civilisation – as Iceland was a colony of Denmark for nearly 400 years. The history of the Nordic nations is here one of the threads spun into this narrative. Nations that today call themselves brothers and sisters and run joint cultural funds, but still have a blood-driven history that sometimes we can still feel under the surface.
“Ditte Jensen moves into this apartment building in Iceland where she finds ordinary people with ordinary problems.
“This enables us to put the story into a broader perspective. Because Ditte is a ‘helper’ – much like the Western empire that brought her up, and she behaves like an empire. A well-meaning but militant state, focused on spreading its ideology – even through brute force if necessary.
"And here I hope that we, the Nordic and European audience, will see ourselves. Because in some way we are like the Danish woman. We live in a culture that accepts Machiavelli's sentiment ‘The end justifies the means’.
“My aim as a storyteller is always to entertain, entertain and entertain – but also and maybe on a deeper level to reveal for the audience a ‘bigger picture’ - a picture where, if you look closely enough, you might find yourself staring back.”
Speaking to Drama Quarterly, Erlingsson describes Dyrholm as an “extraordinary talent”, and she does an great job in the series.
Dyrholm herself says to expect the unexpected. “It’s not often that you watch a TV series and you don’t know where it goes”.
That’s definitely the case with The Danish Woman: it's got the things you love about a gritty Nordic drama, but with a twist. Many twists in fact. Ditte Jensen is not made for a quiet retirement.
This article contains material supplied by Slot Machine / Gullslottid / Zik Zak Filmworks.
The Danish Woman is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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The Danish Woman
