Product: After The Wedding (Despues De La Boda) [NTSC/REGION 1 & 4 DVD. Import-Latin America] (2006)
Rating: 5.0
Hidden Treasure
The accolades accorded to the two leading male actors in this movie are well deserved.What only slowly grew in my consciousness is the outstandingly nuanced performance by the actress Sidse Babett Knudsen, in her role as Jorgen Hansson's wife Helene. I did not immediately recognize the varied dimensions of this finely nuanced performance, a hidden treasure which I only gradually realized through repeated, extended exposure, coupled with my increasing understanding of the underlying psychological dynamics which this actress's film character may have been experiencing, and which this actress's performance sought to convey - which she does with aplomb.Sidse Babett Knudsen's acting is remarkable for another reason: she is playing more than just one role, she is playing three: (tycoon's) wife, mother, and former lover. Each of these roles requires very distinct character acting, each of which this actress plays distinctively, convincingly, and with powerful feminine magnetism.Some of the most compelling and effective acting by Sidse Babette Knudsen, as Helene Hansson, is principally conveyed by this actress's wide range of captivating facial expressions, many of which were so subtle and discreet as to be barely perceptible (see her tete-a-tete with Mads Mikkelsen, conducted over a side table at her manor house) - this caliber and range of acting is terrific stuff.I am not bothered, like some, by numerous close-up shots of the film's four principal characters. Aren't we talking frontal cortex here? I feel these close-up shots are valid and effective, sometime capturing a film character's private, interior moments, and sometimes a film character's behavioral sine qua non - as with the pivotal realization by Jorgen Hansson's wife Helene, to remarks by the grandmother re her son Jorgen's chauffeur, etc. (followed by a close-up shot of a chandelier's dangling glass chimes).Intimate, "non-invasive" close-up shots, taken from the side, enable the tender capture of "getting to know you" or "catching up" moments, when a young girl touchingly examins the facial expressions of her newly-discovered biological father, to see whether he is genuinely interested in viewing the pictures in her childhood photo album.Considering the magnitude and nature of the information which this film's principal characters have to process, and when and in what contexts they have to process it, close-up shots of eyes may be considered to be part of this film's "action" - as, in fact, it is.I doubt that this film's type of intimate psychological action could be conveyed effectively to an audience in stage acting, where an audience is relatively distant from actors, as it can be conveyed in a film's intimate, and sometimes mandatory, close-up shots, as we see in this film.It's unfortunate for those of us who do not watch or are not saturated or jaded by soap opera, etc., to be burdened and distracted by some commentators' cheapening, maudlin comparisons of this refreshing, high quality film to, e.g., soap opera.