Lille soldat

I saw this movie at the Seoul International Women's Film Festival April 11. I felt it could've been so much more but the sets and scenes were so closed, as in it didn't really show me much about Denmark.

Having said that, I think it was a realistic look into the prostitution scene in Denmark, whose men seem to have a fetish for African women. I've seen CNN reports on the plight of Nigerian women in Denmark, and this movie was a peek into their world.

I don't regret watching it but I'm not exactly sure I'd recommend it, either. The ending also left me hanging as well but oh well, it was the director's vision.

How do you do some good in the world? And is it for the person you want to benefit? Or is it really about being honest with yourself? Little Soldier makes us face some of the hardest questions we may never want to answer. One is war. Another is human trafficking. As Harriet Harman pulls scare figures on trafficked sex workers out of a hat to boost her government's failing public support (and push through another 'tough' bill), this quiet Danish film digs to a level of reality that we maybe didn't want to visit.

A young, disillusioned female soldier returns from Afghanistan. Lotte's psychological numbness is with herself as much as with the world around her. With her own ability – or lack of it – to make a difference. To somehow make the world a better place. Beneath an incredibly powerful fighting frame, she yearns to re-discover her feminine kindness. But war has brutalised her. And when she returns home, the bond she hoped to discover with her father, throws her isolated, war-weary, and unemployed remnant of the woman she has become, against an ineffectual old man on civvy street. He runs a kindly escort business with trafficked women, exchanging a vanload every so often and keeping their passports in his safe.

It is all so horribly everyday. So horribly convincing. Chilling. Yet reality keeps unfolding like a series of Chinese boxes. Each revelation is more realistic than what has gone before. We reach a credible, emotionally charged plateau, only to have it swept from under our feet by an even more believable explanation of what is happening all around us.

Lotte befriends one of the prostitutes, Lily. Her father's favourite. He trusts Lotte to act as driver and bodyguard (a role which Lotte's military training lets her perform a little too well at times). The two women become close, realising they share similar psychological scars. They have become welded to a life they cannot leave. Saving another's soul becomes a heart-rending admission of one's own needs. Needs which can blind.

The brutal honesty of this film reminds me of another movie about war and violence, also directed by a woman (Kate Bigelow's, The Hurt Locker). Both films, without moralising, look at the psychological reality while depicting 'male' violence at its most hard-hitting. In Little Soldier, Lotte has been masculinised, first in a desperate attempt to get attention from her father, and then by being a soldier. Lotte and Lily have nothing but contempt for each other, yet their needs draw them ever closer together. Director Annette K. Olesen peels back the fabric of salvation – a drive that makes us want to save individuals or save the world. Worlds and individuals that are far less sure of their need to be saved than our need to save them. Says Oleson, "Saviours are good. And in fairy tales they are altruistic. But can they expect to be saved too? Can you save somebody who doesn't want salvation?" Little Soldier is another fine feather in the cap of Zentropa, the Danish film company founded in 1992 by director Lars von Trier. And while it has great depth, it is not aimed solely at the art house crowd. Heart-warming, profoundly moving, shocking and violent, Little Soldier is a film that will fight to stay in your memory.

"Lille Soldat" is the story of a (female)soldier, Lilly, who is back from war. Having hit rock bottom she gets a job, working for her father(Dad), as the personal driver of his girlfriend prostitute Lily.

The movie takes up a couple of relevant subjects, the problems of readjusting to everyday life after returning from war and human-trafficking and forced prostitution. serious business. But throughout the film it feels like none of this is getting taken seriously.

The characters are bland and lack depth, we never really get to know anything about them or their past. and the few things we are fed along the way seem cliché and pasted on. the opposite gender "relationship" Lilly has with her neighbor is completely irrelevant to the story and in the long run it gets kind of annoying looking at Rasmus Botoft's stupid grin witch apparently is the only expression he is capable of. the "Dad" character is soft and too comical to be in charge of anything and has no credibility as the "brutal boss" of a prostitution ring. There are no reasons or ends for the actions of the two female leads, whenever they start to open up in the slightest mannor we get left with either some heavy breathing or a melancholic tune and that does not make up for the lack of a proper script.

Plastering relevant issues on a film does not make it important and it does not necessarily make it good."Lille Soldat" and its complete lack of credibility is at best yet another embarrassing testimony that Danish film has been at an impasse of melodramas for years.

This is a very fine film, more serious than most Danish films, less somber than one might have feared. The story of prostitution among trafficked women is heart-wrenching at times, but is helped along by entertaining scenes and an excellent score. Well-established dramatic actress Trine Dyrholm gives a strong and controlled performance as a soldier recently back from war stumbling through her days as she is drawn into an unseen underworld that's right under her nose, and ours. The screenplay lets her scarring experiences in war bubble under the surface, and the character becomes the more interesting for it. Finn Nielsen has a rare, but excellent big role as the father, who is in turn comical and brutal, and British actress Lorna Brown is good as the Nigerian woman who is thankful for any client who will pay.

The film is critical of the forces that drive prostitution and trafficking and exposes the hypocrisy of the father, who claims to be helping the women he is selling, but it doesn't spell out its message, and its message is not easy to spell out. It is a captivating piece of fiction and deserves more than the lacklustre audience reception it has so far received in Denmark.