Kærlighed på film (2007) Reviews

• Take My Picture, It'll Last Longer

  ElijahCSkuggs2009-12-01

  The person who made the final decision, whoever it was, on the title of this movie, needs to be spanked. Bad job. Just Another Love Story sounds like it's some romantic comedy. Sure it fits the story, but phewy, that title isn't helping anybody, especially the makers of the film to market this well-made flick. Just Another Love Story in a pinch is about a man who stupidly, selfishly and led by hormones is brought into a weird situation where he is now living the life of a different identity. He was Jonas, but now he's Sebestian; Julia's love. Julia's past isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and his new little life as Prince Charming is slowly unraveling. If you're looking to watch a solid thriller with fantastic acting and production values, as well as a film that'll mess with your emotions with each developing scene, then this is a flick you should check out. Good flick, bad title. I like mine better. ;)

• Strange, erotic, ambivalent, cruel, funny, scary, ugly, beautiful!

  thauseefbhai2009-01-10

  This movie is everything that reminds me why I love movies. I came across it unwittingly as I stood outside a remote movie hall in New York and was drawn to its English title, "Just Another Love Story". One glance at the poster told me it was anything but that. A man, stands with a gun drawn over a dead man in a pool of blood. Time wasn't wasted. Tickets were bought. Seats occupied. The movie begins like promised with a series of numbered love scenes. Except that it was hardly love. It begins with the protagonist's narrative of how it all ends and then we are thrown into his life, abruptly as we come in terms with the brutality of what he does, boring mundaneness of how he lives and how he is suddenly, unwittingly drawn into a passionate love, an exotic fantasy and a forbidden life that he claims as his own. And as we follow him through a sensory overload of events, we are both repulsed and strangely attracted to his actions. The guilty pleasure of enjoying something really despicable. There is always a woman, the protagonist says, and there is one here. One, we are as much mesmerized with, as is the protagonist. Cleverly written, the characters often dwell in the intricacies of metafiction. A woman and a mystery are the ideal ingredients of a movie, one of the characters says sarcastically. A good shot, says the protagonist in another scene which is a classic film noir shot if any ever is. The background score is brilliant, alternating between a slow haunting acoustic guitar, to a symphony of sorts as we move through the protagonist's life. The script is fresh and pulsating with energy as we laugh one second and are repulsed the very next. If a movie can make you grimace, laugh and bite you nails with apprehension and wonder at the intelligent sharp exchange of dialog, it is one that has managed to make its mark. This particular movie has surpassed the mark. Acting by the lead characters is ace. The confrontation scene between the protagonist and his opposite number is fletched out stunningly. Fragments of each life are shown to you, and as you put everything together and move towards what is a stunning climax, you realize somewhat surprised, that this movie is exactly what it promised to be. Just another love story.

• Film Noir Revitalized

  lola_day2008-01-20

  This may not be my favorite film of all time, but it was definitely a great watch in the theater! It was like an exceptionally twisted version of the romantic comedy "While You Were Sleeping." I loved the blue-and-green cinematography as a backdrop for such a black plot (which, by the way, I thought was entirely coherent and interesting). The filmmaker definitely took some risks you wouldn't see in a Hollywood film, but I thought they payed off. The overlay of simultaneous action images was aesthetically pleasing and allowed forward action to continue while giving clues into the character's mysterious past. I think what really made the film for me though, was the concept of the basic human (and especially American) need for MORE. No matter how perfect a life may seem, it is never really enough. Trying not to spoil the plot, there are some actions that would normally make the character seem like a jerk, but he is still very easy to sympathize with because we all have the same driving desire for satisfaction. I think the original Danish reviews had it right. While some of the violence and nudity may not be completely vital to the plot, it all adds up to a great modern-day film noir.

• A brilliant new film from Bornedal! Love it.

  ChristianGP782007-09-12

  This movie is in my opinion a great leap forward for Danish Film. The many different levels it works on simultaneously - seem to encapsulate the feeling of someone being in way too deep and over his head while not being able to untangle himself from something dangerous, exciting and alluring. The film proficiently portrays how making one split-second decision can take you in to increasingly deeper and more serious waters - pushing you to make choices about your life you never knew you dared. The acting is superb, especially the head first passionate plunge of the relationship between Rebecka Hemse and Anders W. Berthelsen juxtaposed with the secure home-life that Mette (Charlotte Fich) provides, represents and desperately fights to uphold. The editing and pace of the film grips, moves and pushes you into all sorts of different reactions and places, while the gorgeous visual palette of the cinematography is second to none in my opinion. Dan Laustsen must be a member of the absolute elite working in Europe today. I throughly enjoyed this film, and would not hesitate in recommending it to any moviegoers out there who enjoy being challenged, moved and thought-provoked when taking in a film. Go see it!! C

• Film noir with heart to spare

  Ali_John_Catterall2009-07-21

  Right from the outset, the ironically-titled 'Just Another Love Story' demands a nifty bit of doublethink from its audience: try and suspend your disbelief for the next 90-plus minutes - but don't believe anything you see. Above all, never forget this is only a movie. There may well be some deeper truths embedded in the narrative but, for now, we'll assume this stuff is shallower than the puddles pooling around the body of our fall guy, whose departing soul, a la 'Sunset Blvd''s Joe Gillis, is commenting on its broken vessel, bleeding to death on the sidewalk. "In a moment, they'll bring white tape to mark out my profile." And here's a woman, flapping over him and weeping hysterically, as the rain cascades through the gutters in black rivulets. A body, a dame, assassins as yet unknown and lousy weather: yes, it's a film noir alright. Pencils ready? We're about to tick off some more boxes. With all the frenzy of The Muppets' Swedish Chef, director Bornedal juggles noirish ingredients - the dupe, the femme fatale, the mysterious suitcase - and stirs them into a boiling black stew of obsession, murder and stolen identities. The principals, whose trajectories will collide figuratively and literally on a Copenhagen motorway, are Jonas, a crime scene photographer, listlessly married with children and suffering the usual existential crises; and Julia, the beautiful but damaged daughter of a megabucks publisher, initially glimpsed hiding out from Triads in a seedy Hanoi hotel, and engaged in a fevered spot of gunplay with her psychotic lover. Jonas clearly requires a femme fatale to really help screw up his life, and right on cue, the distraught Julia, on the run in Denmark, clips his stalled car, crashes, and slips into a coma. When Jonas shows up at the hospital, Julia's parents mistake him for Sebastian, the dodgy boyfriend they've never met. And with the knowledge gleaned from Interpol that Sebastian has been shot point blank in Vietnam, a bewitched Jonas draws back the screens of opportunity and assumes the 'dead' man's identity, waking the semi-naked Julia with a fairytale kiss - and more; the patient has become pregnant. Blinded and amnesiac, she initially buys Jonas's deception, but memories begin seeping through of violent encounters with Sebastian in Southeast Asia. What really happened out there? Who's the figure in the wheelchair haunting the hospital corridors with a bandaged face, like Claude Rains in 'The Invisible Man'? Can dead boyfriends come back, blown in like an ill wind from the East? Or is Jonas going insane through the pressure of maintaining a double life? This can't end well. "A beautiful woman and a mystery," muses Jonas, "Isn't that how all film noirs begin?" The metafictive Just Another Love Story (which often resembles a Danish Dennis Potter, with its hospitals and obsessions) doesn't so much wear its influences heavily as constantly barrack you with nods, winks and a dig in the ribs. And if this were merely some playful, post-modern exercise featuring striking visuals, lurid full-frontals and Bornedal's trademark mortuary humour, we'd probably still buy it. But there's a bit more to this than just a lot of reflexive razzamatazz. The story deals in dualities: dual identities, dual lives - and that duality extend to the film's technique and tone. Bornedal masterfully folds visual and aural elements from one scene into another to suggest memories, inner-lives and other-lives. In one passage, Jonas denies having an affair to his wife, but the scene is soundtracked by the fluttering cries of his and Julia's lovemaking. A cute trick, sure, but the film never allows its considerable style to swamp stuff like character or heart. Though hardly Dogme, it nevertheless keeps one boot mired in sober reality, eliciting some authentically heartbreaking performances; Charlotte Fich, in particular, is superb as the cheated Mette, struggling to comprehend how her husband has managed to slip clean away from her. A scene in which Jonas' mid-life crisis culminates in the middle of the family's weekly shopping run is both appallingly sad - and bravura direction. "Is this a good place for it?" demands Mette, barely keeping a lid on her mounting panic, as Jonas signals his split. "No place is good," replies Jonas truthfully, as their row spills out into the supermarket car park. Meanwhile, of all of this is intercut with shots of Jonas whisking his new bride to her father's country mansion, while the presiding soundtrack of Vivaldi's ebullient 'Spring' from 'The Four Seasons' provides a perfectly corny accompaniment to one scene - and an ironic counterpoint to the other. Rebirth is painful indeed. As with Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective', this is a film about real people with real middle-aged problems - who just happen to have found themselves locked in the contrivance of a film noir. Its self-conscious, role-playing nature also starts to make sense with the discovery that this is something of a cathartic exercise for the director - a way of publicly working through his guilt following his own admitted marital infidelity. "I left my family but not my children," says Bornedal. "It is not an ideal situation - it is however better than marriages without love." In other words, 'Jonas - c'est moi'. In the hands of another director, one with less integrity, this might have sported a ludicrously upbeat punchline, an attempt to cover-up through fiction. The fantasy of some Hollywood fat cat, excusing his tawdry affairs with a ripping tale of dangerous dames. But it's Bornedal's movie, and his penance is in plain sight. He wants us to see it - needs us to see it. It is why he has chosen film noir to beat himself up with. In film noir, that most moralistic of genres, infidelity does not go unpunished. The film is also a reminder to us, whether single, in a relationship or looking for an escape route, that love exists as much in the imagination as in the heart.