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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Hitchcock meets The Passenger in Denmark

I am finding that the best film making on the planet is being done in Denmark. One of my faves is director Susanne Bier, about whom I did a post recently. Today I watched an accomplished film by a less well known Danish director, Ole Bornedal. I strongly recommend his Just Another Love Story, from 2007. This is a great Hitchcockian tale & plot development: a fairly normal middle class family man goes sideways and gradually finds himself in deeper and deeper hot water. Anders Berthelsen plays this man who is unhappy with his happy life, and through some quirks of fate, assumes the identity of another man...in a big tip of the hat to Antonioni's The Passenger. In true Hitchcock style, he slowly gets more immersed in this stream of events, and loses more and more control. Likewise, the tension builds very slowly, from family dinners to white knuckle scenes. There is a plot twist towards the end that is absent in The Passenger and significantly adds  to the dramatic development. I won't say anything further, to avoid a spoiler. The bad guy is truly menacing, well played by the Danish character actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas. There is some wonderful cinematography by Dan Lausten, that supports the plot and is sometimes beautiful. Yes, you can stream a good copy on Netflix.

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