Mifune (1999)
Director: Søren Kragh-Jacobsen
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
The third Dogma release is at heart a very conventional romantic comedy, gussied up with 'provocative' anti-bourgeois elements carried over from The Idiots and Festen, and shot, as it were, in denial of any production restraints. Kresten (Berthelsen) hasn't told his new wife - the boss's daughter - about his moronic brother back home in the sticks. On the other hand he has told her that his father's dead, so it's a little embarrassing when he gets a phone call on their wedding night reiterating the fact and requesting his presence at the funeral. Off he goes, alone, to pick up the pieces on the farm where he grew up, and find some way of taking care of Rud (Asholt) - who has a mental age of eight. A prostitute fleeing a phone sex pest, Liva (Hjejle), answers Kresten's ad for a housekeeper, and shows up with her tearaway brother (Tarding). What follows would scarcely look out of place in a Garry Marshall film: in fact it's no stretch to imagine a Hollywood remake with Richard Gere, Julia Roberts and maybe Giovanni Ribisi as the idiot brother. True, they'd probably end up domesticating Rud (but then so does director Kragh-Jacobsen), cure the careerist Kresten of his misguided social pretensions (so does Kragh-Jacobsen), and neuter Livia's sexual threat (guess what?). Okay, so it's sailing under false colours and trying to have it both ways, but it is perfectly watchable schmaltz with just a soupçon of edge, right? Right! And camera noise!Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Søren Kragh-Jacobsen
Producer: Brigitte Hald, Morten Kaufmann
Cast: Iben Hjejle, Anders W Berthelsen, Jesper Asholt, Emil Tarding, Anders Hove, Sofie Gråbøl, Paprika Steen full cast
Duration: 101 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now