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In Your Hands (2003)

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From Time Out London

Newly graduated from seminary, Anna (Ann Eleonora Jorgensen) is assigned to a women’s prison about the same time that Kate (Trine Dyrholm) is transferred there from another facility. Rumours surround Kate: that she confronts the drug pushers that prey on the weaker inmates; that she’s incarcerated for an unspeakable crime; that she walks on water – this last one comes from a former addict who claims Kate’s magic touch helped her kick heroin in just one night. For her part, Kate is stonily unforthcoming about her powers or lack thereof – but then she tells the supposedly infertile Anna that she’s pregnant. Are we in the presence of a miracle worker? Or are we mired in the usual cruel meaninglessness of chance and coincidence? This tenth Danish Dogme entry promises a rigorous Bergman-style inquiry into faith, human agency and God’s role on earth, but it soon falls into the pounding lockstep of dour-then-dire inevitability that we’ve come to expect from this school of filmmaking. The movie’s commitment to its own bleakness is certainly potent – no wonder there’s no epiphany.

Author: JWin

Time Out London Issue 1810: April 27-May 04 2005

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jan 22 2008 14:37 This is not quite Bergman and Bresson country but more a small detour from the great questions of whether God exists or not,or how do we live in a Godless world.No, it uses a priest figure to allow us to adumbrate certain questions about faith and forgiveness: loss of faith or forgiveness of self.This is a quiet film despite the fact it's set in a woman's prison.This is at times emotionally raw.About the importance of what one doesn't say as what one does.Where does healing come from and how does it arise?There is the idea of guilt that cannot be punished.Kate the prisoner who has just been moved from another prison has a secret history she doesn't reveal.She becomes the mystic core around which rumours fly,she makes no claims about her powers of healing.Such people do exist.Anna the new theologian pastor has her own baggage of pain,she's been infertile for years.Kate,having no one to confide in,has powers of touch and comforts the weaker inmates.She also falls in love with a warder,her only outlet.What is secret and unspoken has such weight and bearing on the actions and interactions of the inmates.There comes a point where even the Pastor wants to put her faith in Kate despite knowing from computer records what she finds out about Kate's crime.There are transgressions of boundaries going on in the relationships between Warder Henrik and Kate and between Kate and Anna.The former's love becomes illegitimate,the latter's actions breach confidentiality..Anna's life,her conscience and her very beliefs are forever changed.The ending is abrupt.

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