Buy posters from this movie

Here, the talented Mikkelsen reinvents himself once again, slipping – seemingly effortlessly – into the persona of Jacob, a volunteer worker at a woefully underfunded orphanage in Bombay. Devoted to the children in his charge, desperately in need of money to keep the youngsters fed, clothed, and off the streets where they would be relegated to lives of prostitution or, worse, doomed to death, Jacob reluctantly returns to Denmark after a twenty year absence to seek funding from a wealthy entrepreneur, Jørgen (Rolf Lassgård). Initially planning to remain in Copenhagen only eight days, Jacob is exhorted by Jørgen to extend his stay, accepting – again, reluctantly – an invitation to the wedding of Jørgen’s daughter, Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen), a move that sets him hurdling into the looking glass of his chequered past.

How, and why, the lives of Jacob, Jørgen, Jørgen’s wife Helene (Sidse Babett Knutsen), and Anna collide, and whether the collision is motivated by coincidence, fate, or precise engineering, comprises the heart of After the Wedding, and the secrets that continuously, shatteringly, tumble out of it.

None of those secrets will be revealed here.

What – and all – one needs to know is that After the Wedding is a stunning collaboration of Denmark’s, and world cinema’s, finest talents: The awards and accolades deservedly abound in their native country for director Susanne Bier, screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, and performers Mikkelsen and Knutsen. Having already co-opted Mikkelsen, Hollywood is sitting up and taking notice of Bier, whose first English-language film, Things We Lost in the Fire, is being produced by Sam Mendes and released by DreamWorks, and of Jensen, whose previous collaborations with Bier, Open Hearts and Brothers, are set for remakes by Zach Braff and Sony.

The recommendation from here is to run, not walk, to see the Real Deals before Tinseltown does its usual damage.

link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=15164&reviewer=376
originally posted: 04/06/07 09:28:54
 printer-friendly format