When I
first saw that the film OPEN HEARTS was part of the Dogme 95 movement, I
groaned. Great, here we go again – more bad lighting, shitty cinematography,
stomach turning camera work posing as art. Turns out I'm just an asshole,
though, because the 2002 Danish drama was pretty great.
As the
film opens, a young woman's (Sonja Richter) recent engagement to her boyfriend
(Nikolai Lei Kaas) is suddenly interrupted when he becomes the victim of a
brutal car accident, leaving him unable to move anything below his neck.
Despondent and depressed, he pushes the young woman away, even when she spends
most of her time at the hospital trying to visit him.
The
woman who caused the accident (Paprika Steen) is married to one of the doctors
in the hospital (Mads Mikkelsen), so the doctor takes special care to pay
attention to this case and take care of the young woman while she is in the
hospital. Throughout all of this, they become close, and it isn't long before
they're having an affair.
Eventually,
the doctor is convinced he's truly in love with the young woman, to the point
where he wants to leave his wife and kids. His daughter (Stine Bjerregaard)
suspects something is up and starts to snoop around.
This is
one of those movies were everything plays out to its inevitable, logical
conclusion. Extraneous plot doesn't intervene to change everyone's life – the
characters' decisions march them forward towards their fates.
Director
Susanne Bier resists taking sides – it's almost as if the film is an objective
documentary about these events. These are characters you can simultaneously
despise and feel empathy for, and Mads Mikkelson in particular does a good job
as the doctor, walking a fine line where he becomes desperate, but not too
desperate – slimy, but not too slimy. Same with Sonja Richter as the
young woman he's having an affair with – she is not just a home wrecker, and
Steen as the wife is not just a jealous wife, and this is not just a Dogme 95
flick.
No comments:
Post a Comment