The Hunt

2012, Denmark, directed by Thomas Vinterberg (aka Jagten)

I haven't seen a Vinterberg film since his 1998 breakthrough Festen, and this returns to some of the same territory, a close-knit group of middle-class Danes dealing with a trauma. This picture depicts the aftermath of an accusation of child abuse in a small community, and the sense of blind groupthink is quite impressive, while the choice of subject matter is always challenging (to the point, just occasionally, of distraction: I found myself wondering how they worked with the child actor to ensure she was shielded from the more unsavory elements). 

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages

1922/1968, Sweden/Denmark, directed by Benjamin Christensen

A true oddity, this one. Christensen's film purports to be a quasi-academic discourse on witchcraft from antiquity through the present, with the opening section quoting from a variety of manuscript sources and quickly sketching in the apparent ubiquity of the notion of witchcraft, before settling into some kind of ill-defined European middle ages location and unveiling its true purpose, a series of often lurid vignettes depicting the depraved reality of the phenomenon, complete with lascivious devils, torture chambers, and slavering inquisitioners, the better to point up the church's role in creating and sustaining that which it purported to condemn. Christensen shows himself to be a very nimble director, using all manner of effects, from a sort-of live-action tableau of hell to several extraordinarily atmospheric night-time sequences (the most chilling of all perhaps that where a woman mistakes the activities of two anatomists for something rather more sinister -- the scene has none of the wilder elements that are more amusing than alarming to a contemporary audience, and thus retains all of its power).

Terribly Happy

2008, Denmark, directed by Henrik Ruben Genz (Aka: Frygtelig lykkelig)

Given the rather low levels of actual violence in Denmark, it has produced a remarkably dark-toned cinema, whether in the form of the concussive urban tales of Nicolas Winding Refn (the actor Kim Bodnia, a veteran of Refn's debut film, Pusher, plays a key role here) or in the more bucolic settings of The Green Butchers or Terribly Happy. Indeed, the notion that the the countryside hides much greater horrors than the big city is the film's running - if overplayed - joke, with a big city cop finding himself in an apparently byzantine world of criminality far beyond his usual experience. For the most part, director Genz plays things very straight, controlling the tone in ways reminiscent of Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire, although the insistent repetition of incident ultimately makes the film seem rather longer than it is; that said, a genuinely disturbing scene about halfway into the film gives the tension entirely new, distressing dimensions that underline the sense of psychological turmoil experienced by the main character.

Open Hearts

2002, Denmark, directed by Susanne Bier (Aka: Elsker dig for evigt)


Despite the celebrated works of practitioners like Douglas Sirk or his later disciple Rainer Werner Fassbinder, melodramas often seem to get short shrift as a means of cinematic expression. Susanne Bier's film plays things straighter than Sirk might have chosen, as befits an entry in the Dogme 95 style, but she's adept at setting up complex interplays of emotion that take off in unexpected directions. She makes use of the Dogme strictures as a means to tell a compelling story rather than as an end in themselves such that the viewer quickly becomes accustomed to the shaky camerwork and sometimes blurred imagery that assist in the narration of what is ultimately a kind of moral tragedy, in which the characters are unable to perceive the impact of their own actions on others - and often unwilling to accept the consequences of those actions

Bier is blessed with an extraordinarily talented group of actors, who create a set of vividly real, complex, often objectionable characters grounded in the minutiae - both mundane and joyful - of daily life; the simplicity of the film's technique brings allows Bier to get very close to her cast (sometimes uncomfortably so, with the camera literally in the actors' faces, forcing them to adapt and react). Although Dogme calls for a minimum of visual artifice, Bier breaks the rules and bookends her film with richly colored, abstract sequences that recall Lars Von Trier's use of painted colour inserts between the chapters of his otherwise earthy - and melodramatic - Breaking the Waves, a choice that parallels the fevered, uncertain state of mind in which the protagonists are left.

Kinamand

2005, Denmark, directed by Henk Ruben Genz

Rating: ***

A slight but agreeable entry in the cross-cultural encounters genre, Kinamand (the Danish word for Chinaman) is powered by a fine central performance from Bjarne Henriksen, and often witty observations on the meeting between an unhappy Danish plumber and the extended family of a Chinese restaurant owner. In structure and tone, it's similar to the excellent Norwegian/Swedish production Kitchen Stories, without that film's ring of more universal truth; both films employ an episodic structure and feature the rehabilitation of lonely, closed men. Like that film, Kinamand also inhabits a hermetic world, in which outside developments are almost irrelevant: until the end of the film, there's barely a month when the action shifts away from the grey city block where the plumber and restaurateur live and work. While the film has some sharp-edged marital commentary in its early sections, ultimately it's a warm-hearted affair, although there's an emotional honesty to the final scenes that ensures the film stays away from excess sentiment.

Zappa

1983, Denmark, directed by Bille August

As coming-of-age stories go, Zappa is far more bitter than sweet: it's nothing like the heartwarming Swedish My Life As A Dog, made a year later and set a few years earlier. Zappa follows an odd trio of boys in early 1960s Copenhagen: rich kid Steen, a manipulative bully who has everything but the love of his high bourgeois parents; middle-class Bjorn, with whom we're invited to identify most closely; and good-hearted working-class Mulle, the reliable gag-man. From such unpromisingly clichéd raw materials, Bille August fashions a very affecting series of snapshots, as Bjorn in particular navigates the shoals of adolescence and figures out how best to free himself from the malign influence of Steen. The sense of time and place is perfectly judged, with the class tensions of post-war Europe (even in reputedly egalitarian Denmark) in clear relief. The young actors are spot on, as is so often the case in Scandinavian cinema: from their work, you'd assume they all went on to long careers in the movies, but you'd be mistaken. A little patience is needed to let this movie work its spell, but it's worth the investment.