|
A movie shot in black and white announced by the cinema as a comedy and indeed the whole cinema is laughing. But the more time passes and the deeper we get into the world of the unorthodox main characters Daniel, Morfar, Franc and the judge who sits over Daniel's trial at court the more the atmosphere drifts into melancholy. The light heartedness that the movie starts with peels off near the end everyone seems to have lost...
Daniel gets in trouble with the fiscal authorities because they won't believe that he hasn't earned more than 40 kroner (about 5€) in the past four years. He earns his little living by spraypainting love messages on walls but his own love life gets twisted upside down the day he meets Franc, a shop assistant in a bakery that his best and only friend Morfar has a crush on. When he gets thrown out of the trailer he used to live in and is caught by the cops spraypainting his misery is complete. Well almost...
Morfar which means grandfather in english works in a sleep laboratory and is a passionate football referee, a passion that is only exceeded by his insufficiency for this task gets more than obvious on the day of his practical examination. But is this really worse than seeing one's best friend starting a relationship with the girl one loves and which he had never met if it wasn't for you?
Franc's full name is Francesca and the day she meets Daniel she gets fired for selling bread or rather not selling bread on magic mushrooms. She is so beautiful, so cute and so openhearted but even she is not immune against fateful deep hits...
And the judge... well it seems like he isn't too satisfied with his well ordered life...
Dagur Kári (also known for "nói albinói") did a good job with this movie that combines the tragedy of Lars von Trier with the comedy of Martin Spang Olsen. You laugh and you want to cry but you can't because it is all so heart-warming. The characters are so odd and so special and their world and the way it is shot have something surreal. This might be Copenhagen but you can go there and search for years and you will never find it. This is no sociorealism and this isn't play of morale either. It is a little melancholy story about a few people who live our dreams in a way that they are completely unconventional. If it was music I would compare it to Múm or Sigur Rós from Iceland. It touches the scandinavian side of me. And if this was music that one shot in colour would be the blue note and I guess you all know how a blues feels like, eh? And that's just the way this movie is... [jan]
www.voksnemennesker.dk
|
