Product: After The Wedding (Despues De La Boda) [NTSC/REGION 1 & 4 DVD. Import-Latin America] (2006)
Rating: 4.0
an extraordinary achievement
****1/2From Denmark comes "After the Wedding," an unusually rich and complex human drama, marked by superb performances, insightful writing, and stylish direction by Susanne Bier. Nominated by the Motion Picture Academy for Best Foreign Language Film of 2006 (but not released commercially in the U.S. until the following year), this is one of the true unheralded movie gems of 2007.Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) is a dedicated social worker from Denmark whose orphanage in India has caught the eye of a Danish philanthropist named Jergen (Rolf Lassgard), who summons the young man to Copenhagen to discuss his plan for donating a substantial sum of his own money to the project. While in the city, Jacob is invited to attend the wedding of Jergen's adopted daughter, Anna, only to discover when he gets there that Jergen's wife is, in reality, his old girlfriend, Helene, and that Anna might, in fact, be the child he never knew he had.With a screenplay by Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen, "After the Wedding" transcends the "soap opera" nature of its premise to become a deeply moving study of the compromises and sacrifices all of us are forced to make throughout the course of our lives. The characters the writers have come up with are admirably complex, credibly three-dimensional, and never all that easy to peg. With his somber, deeply lined face masking the emotional turmoil within, Mikkelsen gives a darkly brooding performance as a man who finds it easier to give of himself on a grand scale - i.e., trying to save the world - than to make a meaningful connection with any single individual. Sidse Babette Knudson is poised and lovely as Jacob`s deeply conflicted former lover and Jergen`s wife, while Lassgard hits amazing dramatic heights as Jergen, who is, in many ways, the most enigmatic of the three main characters. For much of the film, we are left to ponder whether Jergen is a genuinely good man or merely a world-class manipulator who enjoys playing god with the lives of those around him. Finally, Stine Fischer Christensen delivers a deeply touching performance as the vulnerable young woman whose wedding serves as the catalyst for much of the drama. There are no heroes or villains in this piece, only flawed but well-meaning and believable individuals whom we come to care deeply about throughout the course of the film.In her direction, Bier brings a great deal of texture to the work, focusing on the subtle details of the scenes and boring into the very souls of the characters through intense close-up concentration on the actors' pores and eyes. The music by Johan Soderqvist is subtle and haunting and adds tremendous flavor to the drama."After the Wedding" is a beautiful film that sweeps us up in its story and characters and makes us intimate participants in the world it is showing us. It is both heartbreaking and thought-provoking in roughly equal measure - and what more could one ask of a movie?