Would you cheat on your partner?
Written: May 08 '03 (Updated May 08 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: All those trying questions!
Cons: Not many cons, really.
The Bottom Line: Open Hearts is a surprising film. Don't miss out on the opportunity to see it.
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| joecooper's Full Review: Open Hearts |
If you were suddenly paralysed from the neck down, would you encourage your partner to seek love and life away from your miseries? If you were breaking the speed limit, when you accidentally demolished a pedestrian, would you let the police in on that little fact? Is life too short to waste time propping up a tired and passionless marriage, especially when a younger, more attractive lover beckons? These juicy questions and more are posed in Susanne Bier’s bittersweet Danish drama.
Open Hearts is the story of two Copenhagen couples unfortunate enough to meet each other. As the film begins, the viewer’s introduced to the charismatic yet earthy Joachim and Cecilie. It’s obvious that these two twenty-somethings possess a rare enthusiasm for life and for each other. Their love together is clearly the kind that lights up a room.
The other pair consists of the less intense, but equally likable, Niels and Marie. An overworked doctor and full-time Mum, Niels and Marie are lost in the wilderness of their late thirties and slowly drifting apart from each other emotionally. Their only remaining bond is the burdensome task of raising three children, including a spitefully rebellious teenage girl. There is some love left between the two, but it appears habitual and perhaps for the sake of appearances, rather than the true spark they may once have shared.
The couples meet in tragic fashion one innocuous morning. After kissing Cecilie goodbye, Joachim is promptly bounced off the front of Marie’s speeding car. What follows then is a freefall into a humanist nightmare. When the physically and emotionally shattered Joachim shuns his fiancé, guilt-stricken Marie encourages her husband, who works at the hospital, to strike up a temporary friendship and emotionally support the distraught Cecilie. It seems a likely course of action to salve everyone’s wounds, until Niels falls in love with Cecilie and she accepts his advances in the pursuit of sexual healing. A tragedy that wrecks one life quickly spreads to consume four.
Seldom does a film come along in which all of the main characters are acted out flawlessly. While Stine Bjerregaard, who plays Niels’ and Marie’s teenage daughter, leans heavily towards the melodramatic, the central four adult roles are delivered almost to perfection. Joachim, Cecilie, Niels, and Marie are brought to life with stunning performances by Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Sonja Richter, Mads Mikkelsen, and Paprika Steen respectively. These relatively unknown (at least in the English speaking world) actors shine and bring human warmth to the cold drama of Open Hearts.
Mads Mikkelsen, in particular, as the love-struck Niels, could provide more prominent actors with lessons in the art of avoiding stereotypes. Despite Niels' cheating ways, Mikkelsen manages to generate the necessary empathy required to make his character wholly believable. Cheaters, however deplorable, are not evil souls. They still love their children, and can be likeable despite their crimes. Mikkelsen understands this and delivers.
Susanne Biers and her crew have adopted the filmmaking tenets of the Dogme 95 movement for Open Hearts. In essence, only natural lighting has been used, rather than intense studio bulbs, and all sound has been recorded at the time the scene is performed. Rather than constraining Open Hearts, the adherence to the doctrine enhances the film’s human feel and produces the raw honesty that the story requires to transcend the ‘just another drama’ tag. That can’t be said for most of the films adhering to the monastic rigours of Dogme 95, so Bier’s achievements need to be lauded.
In the tradition of Unfaithful and Indecent Proposal, Open Hearts throws forth some controversial, yet highly entertaining questions. As well as providing fodder for an interesting conversation on the way home from the cinema, Susanne Bier’s film is a deeply moving drama that will stick in the heart and the mind. It’s a classic reminder that life can turn on a dime and often does. This small cinematic masterpiece needs to be experienced to be believed. Four and a half stars for Open Hearts.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
joecooper
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Reviews written: 120
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Aging whippersnapper and freelance journo.
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