mussarimark

In Thomas Vinterberg's Families Like Ours (Familier som vores), characters face impossible decisions in what could have been an over-the-top apocalyptic sci-fi series. Instead, within the environmental framework of disaster, Vinterberg stays focused on the human cost. It's ironic to see some reviewers question how certain characters could be so stupid or myopic in their decision making, but the series shows how difficult it is for people faced with impossible choices, particularly emotional ones, to think clearly when they're losing everything else.

The series is blessed with some excellent Danish actors--but it's the two young leads (Amaryllis April August and Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt) who pull us in and keep us connected. It isn't that the other actors aren't excellent (Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Paprika Steen always reliable)--but the stories of Laura and Elias are simply more riveting--and extreme. The series also pushes at the notion that becoming a refugee can only happen to "others," illustrating what happens when even well-off Danes become unwanted migrants. The human dilemma is simply human, at all costs, even if you start out on better financial footing.

It's very hard to watch some of this series, especially some of the violence, but it's necessary to see what can happen to anyone. Determination alone doesn't ensure anything in a world like this--though it helps. Sometimes faith and acceptance bring some stability, as with Fanny (Steen), and at others it brings disaster anyway. We move toward an unclear resolution, the most we can hope for in this fictive world.

For those unfamiliar with the Danish actor Trine Dyrholm, Queen of Hearts (Dronningen) offers an excellent example of her range and subtle yet strong screen presence. If you haven't seen her in the series Avingerne (The Legacy), you're in for another treat as she and Carsten Bjørnlund (one of DK's finest actors) turn in a pair of brilliant performances.

It's interesting to read that some found Dyrholm's character Anne so sympathetic at first. Actually, she seems far too put together right from the start, and the perfectly organized Nordic contemporary home and her hair (the Danish version of a blunt cut) seem like objective correlatives of her far too controlled veneer. Watching Dyrholm slowly transform into the self-concerned, destructive, and dishonest narcissist she actually is is one of the warped joys of this film. The director also employs nature as a twisted symbol of Anne's twisted persona, which emerges through her relationship with her husband's son Gustav (Gustav Lindh) from another marriage. Ironically, Anne works with abused minors but can't stop herself from seducing her stepson. That she could be as thoroughly expedient, manipulative, and dishonest as she becomes is at once both shocking and yet strangely inevitable.

It's a shame the film is about 20 minutes too long. It would have been such a great, compact study of all the themes it touches upon without the excess. Still, this is a film worth watching for the performances. Magnus Krepper is also really fine as her Swedish husband. This is a psychological study of a manipulative woman who might not be as amoral as we think, evidenced by the appearance of Gustav in the bathroom mirror toward the end.

A Copenhagen Love Story--simply titled Sult (Hunger) in Danish--offers up a fine performance by Rosailnde Mynster as the author Mia, a woman desperate to have a baby, particularly after she falls in love with a curator named Emil (who has two children from a former relationship). While the movie at first glance seems to be masquerading as a rom-com, it is not: it's a brutal look at the difficulties of fertility problems and treatments and the toll all of it takes on both partners in a relationship. American viewers might not be familiar with Mynster but she's a truly fine actor--watch her in the series Badehotellet (Seaside Hotel). She's brilliant in that (in fact it's painful when her character leaves that series after a few seasons).

The Danes are culturally very open about the body and all its functions; so some of the film might seem almost jarring to the more prudish viewer. We watch Mia and Emil struggle through myriad treatments and the ups and downs of their own relationship, driven by the stress of trying to have a baby of their own. At times the viewer wants to yell "stop!" at the couple. What pregnancy would be worth this much tribulation and disappointment? On that front it is not an easy film to watch--and the film is about 15 minutes too long. The other characters are not particularly fleshed out, and the filmmakers indulge in some stereotypes in Mia's gay brother and his partner.

Still, it's worth it to watch the acting and to get the cultural picture on how the Danes handle these complex subjects.