A gloomy Danish film about a man who gives up his dream life
with beautiful wife in Stockholm to come back to Copenhagen to run the family
business from which he’s earlier walked away – because his father has committed suicide.
Lots of nastiness within the family because the brother-in-law who has been
helping to run the business is aggrieved and tries to undermine him with sly
fraud rumours, the gorgeous wife has to abandon her own successful career as a
serious actress, and so on.
In a period setting it would be a great
illustration of the role of deferred gratification in the process of capitalist
accumulation and the rise of the bourgeoisie. In modern Denmark it’s
relentlessly miserable – our protagonist does his duty and becomes absolutely committed
to the firm at the expense of his own happiness, breaking the promise he made
to the gorgeous wife to limit his involvement to two years, shafting his loyal
friends and family members. He has a drink-fuelled meltdown, tries to rape the
chambermaid at the villa where his wife and new son go for a recovery holiday,
and finally lets his wife (and son) go and replaces them with the woman his dominant
mother prefers.
Well acted, some good
cinematography (especially the steelworks, but also the claustrophobic bourgeois
house interiors).
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