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★★★☆☆
10 March 2015
This article is a review of A SECOND CHANCE. |
“We don’t have Alexander. Not any more,” Andreas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)
Director Susanne Bier’s brand of heightened melodrama was getting tired. Trying to shake things up, LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED ended up being a tonally odd romantic-drama damp squib. Period Jennifer Lawrence-Bradley Cooper starrer SERENA was a non-starter. A SECOND CHANCE demands we swallow a plot point so far-fetched that only the classiness of proceedings and performance commitment allow a pass – not without an eye-roll though.
Director Susanne Bier’s brand of heightened melodrama was getting tired. Trying to shake things up, LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED ended up being a tonally odd romantic-drama damp squib. Period Jennifer Lawrence-Bradley Cooper starrer SERENA was a non-starter. A SECOND CHANCE demands we swallow a plot point so far-fetched that only the classiness of proceedings and performance commitment allow a pass – not without an eye-roll though.
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Opening shots resemble latter day Terrence Malick: Sombre people looking morosely into the middle distance in an idyll. Those images will be returned to, with artistic redundancy. Bar Mads Mikkelson, Denmark’s male acting big guns are wheeled out: Coster-Waldau (GAME OF THRONES), Ulrich Thomsen (FESTEN) and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (THE GREEN BUTCHERS). Credibility lent to the outlandish is in most part thanks to their presence.
Trading in broken people is the speciality of Bier and writer Anders Thomas Jensen (is there a currently working scribe with as many as credits?). Branching out from the wounded family unit to include practically everyone with more than two scenes, A SECOND CHANCE is almost misanthropic if not for the redemptive conclusion – which will surely divide the viewer based on how pessimistic you take your cinema. At a certain point, one hoped Bier had been gone all FARGO TV show, but it was not to be – epic Mephistophelian drama is only skirted, comfort zone barrier integrity maintained. Shame.
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Incongruous-looking cop partners, Andreas (Coster-Waldau) and Simon (Thomsen), are called upon a domestic disturbance. “Psycho” drug addict Tristan (Kaas), tattooed and mohawk-coiffured to leave no doubt, is out on parole. Violent to ex-partners, he has now hooked up with Sanne (May Andersen) and fathered a baby, Sofus. Upsettingly covered in his own effluent, and clearly neglected, the police duo tries to get social services to intervene to no avail.
From housing estate to beautiful waterfront country property, Andreas’ life is the mirror opposite. Baby Alexander and wife Anna (Maria Bonnevie) accompany the surface of perfection. Andreas, Anna, Alexander. Don’t fret at the cuteness, subverting class assumptions is on its way.
“If they take him, I’ll kill myself,” Anna
Being a Bier flick means the quiet dread of waiting for tragedy. Of course it comes, and Andreas is placed in a dilemma if not impossible, close to it.
Three broken families, Jensen-Bier have upped the ante.
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