Open Hearts

Another one of those small Euro digital films that explores human emotion so much better than the mega-bucks equivalents from the States.

When a loving couples unity is shattered by a horrific road accident that cripples the boyfriend, the story explores how a moment can destroy a lifetime or create alternate paths. Superbly acted with deep pathos and unflinching torment, I have yet to see a better performance this year of a female lead. You leave the cinema questioning how the happiest moment in your life can be stolen in a blink of an eye. Life is fragile and all too brief. Not a minute should be wasted.

A Bergmanesque study of a marriage that is turned upsidedown by one part mishap and one part momentary lapse of reason. What's provocative here, and makes for an intelligent and moving film, is the way in which the spurned wife (played with quiet dignity by the estimable Paprika Steen) doesn't dish up deserved revenge, quivering hatred or physical or mental violence. but, rather, offers an attempt to understand, to accept, and to hold the family together regardless. How rare is this? The line that stays with me - and it's a casual aside but one that cuts straight to the bone - is Paprika telling her husband's mistress that `we can't even afford' the new furniture he has lavished on her.

Once the film hits its groove, its DOGME origins are forgotten and we're left with intimacy and the thousand and one little tragedies that unfold on any given day of any given week. It could be said to be modest in scope, somewhat uninventive in form, and it does immerse itself uncritically in the middle class milieu (and in this respect, I would liken it to Moretti's `La Stanza del Figlio' - except that film does seem to express a suppressed distaste for Berlusconi's Italy), but there's an honesty and maturity that make it a valuable experience - particularly for any teenager used to a soap opera diet of hysterical marriage operatics. or for anyone still recovering from `Festen'.

At its best, and there's a frisson of that here, DOGME-95 has delivered fresh slices of life (or, to elaborate, privileges a panorama of personal battles against a recognisably familiar backdrop) - its Vows of Chastity whittling the camera down to something akin to a microscope.

Dogme movement (1995-2005) is a terra incognita for me, although now it has officially existed only as a terminology thanks to the ubiquitous evasion of shooting on location with any cellphones or other hand-held lighter gizmos, and its spirit has been ingested by more advanced mutants (e.g. mumblecore). But Susanne Bier is not merely a Dogme enthusiast, AFTER THE WEDDING (2006 7/10) is a redoubtable relationship dissection and OPEN HEARTS (the new Hannibal Mads Mikkelsen star in both films) treads the same territory to examine the complexity of humans' conundrum between desire and responsibility, ethics and emotions.

Two couples, one is engaged, another has 3 children, a car accident (not entirely abides by the Dogme rules though) turns their worlds upside down, a threat is common-or-garden both in the cinematic and real world; the life-changing mishap prompts an adultery between a middle class doctor and the disheartened fiancée, whose fiancé undergoes a permanent quadriplegia from the car accident where the doctor's wife is the offender.

The face-fixated close-ups extensively put those characters under scrutiny for their rational and irrational behaviors, natural light commingles with saturated palette (during the beginning and the ending) and a black & white lens of the blurry and grainy illusory fancy. The cast is sterling, a quartet of tug-of-war from Mikkelsen, Richter, Lie Kass and Steen, a humdrum-weary family man holds his seven-year-itch infatuation to a damsel-in-distress; a comfort-seeker with abiding guilt of abandoning her bed-ridden fiancé; a young paralyzer who ruthlessly deserts his fiancée for his incompetence as a proper man but still hankers for her company; a wife is rueful of her road rage and its tragic repercussions, suddenly devastated by her husband's utter betrayal; Steen's impromptu slapping and Mikkelsen's reaction are among the best on-screen intensified scenes I have even seen, three of the four leads end up in my yearly top 10 list (guess who narrowly missed the spot?).

But on the other hand, the melodramatic core of the story hobbles a soul-searching catharsis and empathetic introspection which would put the film onto an upper notch, Bier and DP Morten Søborg's camera is erratic but not dizzily shaky, the fly-on-the-wall intimacy allows us to take a much closer look at the symptoms and the cause of the frailty resides in every soul on earth, and offers us staying in a paralleled world, munches with palliative pills to ease our own troubles.

We are living in a Golden Age concerning Danish films. One didn't think Susanne Bier would get into the Dogma genre, but there she is now.

This is really good. There's a loving couple, where the man is badly hurt in a car accident and becomes lame, with all the complications, also sexually of course, this means. It wasn't the driver's fault, but she feels guilty and her husband tries to comfort the girl. But the comfort goes much too far.

This is about big feelings, but Bier leads you right into them, without rushing away from you. The acting is absolutely brilliant, especially the plain virtuosity from Paprika Steen and Mads Mikkelsen. I've seen more than 50 films this year, but this might be the best one. Strongly recommended!

I am not very much into dogma movies - but this one is really worth looking. As always, the danish acting is superb (by the way: can anybody explain me, why actors from Denmark are so convincing every time?) I also liked the open ending, which doesn't pretend to find a solution to a nearly unsolvable problem. Furthermore, the beginning was gorgeous. Susanne Bier presents her characters in slightly normal situations - but yet that charming and vivid, you just have to love the young couple. And so you also will suffer from the incident and its consequences for them. Another interesting aspect is, that there is absolutely no antagonist in this movie - and, surprise, surprise: you won't miss one! All the characters have two sides, are protagonist and antagonist at the same time - just like in real life!