AFTER THE WEDDING/EFTER BRYLLUPPET - Nik's best film of 2006 AND 2007!

This review is posted by guest reviewer, Daniel Plainview.

It's important, in any movie review, to cut to the chase quickly, for those who do not plan to read past the first paragraph. So, to put it succinctly, this is the best film I've seen this year. Since it's not been up against great competition, I should add that had I seen it in 2006, it would still have been the best film I had seen that year too. Susanne Bier (BROTHERS) has outdone herself here in directing an understated yet moving, contentful, and absolutely captivating drama, that takes the viewer on a voyage with the characters that they won't soon forget.

Even had the plot not been as thick as it was with suspense and raw human emotion, this film would have been worth seeing for the acting performances alone. Mads Mikkelsen (CASINO ROYALE, PUSHER) outdoes himself as the central character Jacob; quietly spoken; intense; a man of few words. Sidse Babett Knudsen (Helene) and Stine Fischer Christensen (Anna) make for excellent co-stars, skillfully weaving the complex relationships that the movie portrays and making them more real, more tangible. But even given these superlative performances, Rolf Lassgård as Jorgen (father of Anna and husband to Helene) simply steals the show. I defy anyone not to be moved by the awesome power and sheer humanity of his acting - in fact I think his performance alone makes the film worth seeing again.

And indeed, that is perhaps the greatest triumph of the film, that it's worth seeing again. The plot unravels in such an intense and clever way that despite the relative simplicity of the central concept, and the fact that there are no clever Memento or Pulp Fiction-like plays with chronology, you are nevertheless constantly re-evaluating earlier scenes, the emotions of the players, the development of the characters, why they reacted the way they did, how they must have been feeling given what was going on inside them. Of course there is no "inside them", they're only actors, but such is the stark realism of this film encapsulated not only by the acting but by the sensitive camerawork and subtle score, that the scenes, the emotions, the stories become completely real to the audience.

I suppose I ought to be balanced in this review, and to say that this won't be everyone's cup of tea, for a very good reason. After the Wedding is an intense experience - one that is emotionally draining in a way other films are not. You come out of the cinema feeling as if you've gone through not quite an ordeal, but a journey with the characters. So much has happened, there's so much to the film; so many emotional highs and lows; so many twists and turns and surprises; so much drama, and pain. This is not by any means light viewing, and I wouldn't recommend it as a popcorn muncher.

But it does set the bar as far as future releases for this year are concerned. It is a sad comment on modern cinema that, for the first 40 minutes or so, I sat in the cinema expecting the plot to unravel in a 2-dimensional way, with goodies and baddies, a linear plot, a hero, a anti-hero, and a simple happy hollywood ending. Even though I say it again, realism is the catchword in this film - it avoids the melodrama of hollywood, the paint-by-numbers morality of Jungian archetypal characters, and the triteness of a clean, happy and sown-up ending. After the Wedding exceeded all my expectations, repeatedly confounded my cynicism, and finally conquered my heart. I laughed, I cried, I fell in love and out of it, and I am left with only one option: to heartily recommend this same experience to you.

AFTER THE WEDDING - ETER BRYLLUPPET opened in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy in 2006 and in Greece and Germany earlier this year. It is currently on release in Belgium, France, and the UK. It opens in Poland next week and in the US on March 30th.

P.S. BINA007 wholeheartedly concurs with this review.

DEAR WENDY - Billy Elliot goes Gangsta!

DEAR WENDY tells the tale of a bunch of losers in mid-town America. The kids club together and found The Dandies - a club for pacifists who dress well, read poetry..... They also meet in darkened mines, learn everything they can about guns and become crack-shot shooters. Crucially, though, they never fire a gun in "open warfare". The key is to allow the fascination with guns and mastery of them to be empowering rather destructive. And empowered they are. The kids find friendship, community, self-respect - they start playing music again (largely, bizarrely, 60s hits by The Zombies). Their guns become their girlfriends, named, beloved. The kids get laid, get tits, get top hats. Yes, yes. Into this off-whack self-help group steps a black kid called Sebastian. He makes a move on Dickie's gun, his girl and his gang. Is it any surprise that in a movie populated by armed-up, sexually frustrated, jealous teens, it all ends in a gun-fight and tears before bedtime?

This being a Lars von Trier-scripted film, the America of DEAR WENDY is somewhat off whack. Poor white miners can afford to hire black maids and kids drink tea. Perhaps even more bizarre than drinking tea, these US kids sometimes affect a "Brideshead stutter" - mimicking fictional toff and cult figure, Antony Blanche! I mean, seriously, how many mid-western teens have even heard of a novel about a bunch of Catholic aristo repressed homosexuals? Other Trier-isms include the fact that the destructive violence is introduced by a young black kid. And on one level, much as he denies it in interviews, I am sure he would love for this movie to be read as a searing indictment of America's gun culture as well as Bush's foreign policy. A bunch of insecure people armed up and firing first out of fear and misunderstanding. Iraq, anyone?!

But this movie is better than the recent von Trier agitprop. This is because DEAR WENDY is directed by Thomas Vinterberg, one of my favourite directors. He came to notice with the haunting drama Festen, which won, among other things, the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. Handed a dry polemic fuelled by conceptual hocus-pocus, Vinterberg breathed life into the script. The sets are great and shot with intimacy on hi-def video. The kids all invest the film with energy and goofiness. Don't get me wrong - DEAR WENDY is not a dramatic tour-de-force - but it's a perfectly enjoyable coming-of-age story and not as pretentious as the reviews suggest

Best of all, the message of the film, if there is one, is rather the opposite to what the US critics would have you believe. I find the film to be an indictment of liberals who deceive themselves that they are pacifists and immune to the allure of guns, while being as vulernable to gun culture as paid-up members of the NRA. The directer himself was raised in a honest-to-goodness hippie commune in Denmark, where "gun" was a dirty word, and admits to his fascination with guns. Moreover, the movie indicts Dickie, the leader of the gang, for trying to "dandify" Sebastian, the convicted criminal. If there is a moral to this film, it is that liberals should cut the crap, admit how beholden they are to gun culture, and stop talking about redeeming society of violence. The ultimate gunfight is inevitable. America may be damned, but so if everyone else.

DEAR WENDY premiered at Sundance 2005, went on limited cinematic release over the summer and is now available on region 1 and region 2 DVD. The movie cost $8m to make and took $100,000 on theatrical release. This should not be taken as an indication of its quality.