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Just Another Love Story (2007)

Director: Ole Bornedal

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From Time Out London

Obsession with death seems to be a central theme in the work of Danish writer-director Ole Bornedal, who is most famous for the middling, morgue-set Hollywood thriller ‘Nightwatch’, which was a remake of Bornedal’s Danish original. This new film plays like a film noir rethought for contemporary Denmark, albeit a little self-consciously. Anders W Berthelsen is good as Jonas, a 2.2 family man and a city crime-scene photographer who is whisked into a world of exchanged personalities, Triad diamond smuggling, suicide pacts and forbidden love following a car crash involving a millionaire’s daughter (Rebecka Hemse) with Patty Hearst syndrome.

Shot competently in widescreen, Bornedal’s bourgeois escapism drama is played out, in the main, in a realist register. It kicks off with a mysterious pair of shootings, one in Denmark, the other in a crummy Thai hotel, which the film then proceeds to explain in jigsaw fashion. ‘Beautiful women and mystery’ are a man’s incentive to escape the nine-to-five routine, kids and the Saturday shop, explains Jonas in voiceover. His is an unusually dramatic philosophy for an ordinary guy, one that threatens to disturb the film’s credibility. However, Berthelsen’s excellent low-key acting keeps disbelief suspended. Moreover, ambitious cross-cutting and occasional bursts of strident music hint at psychologically complex parallels and readings that the film fails to deliver. On the plus side, Bornedal shows ability in both the family scenes (nurturing a good performance from Charlotte Fich as Jonas’s wife) and the violent ones, which are sometimes surprisingly gruesome.

Author: Wally Hammond 2009-07-21 12:26:45

Time Out London issue 2031, July 23-29, 2009

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Posted on Jul 25 2009 17:06 Went to see JALS with gf on Fri nite @ Odeon Cov Gard. Will try to keep this as spoiler-free as poss. Plusses: Berthelsen, a level and correctly unhistrionic perf as Jonas; Fich, even better as Mette, who lit up pretty much every scene she was in; the violence, which wasn't overdone; and the cinematography, which gave JALS a good sense of 'place'. Minuses: the unnecessary American Beauty opening and close; Julia, not well-written enough a character to be the hinge of the plot; Sebastian, almost a cartoon villain; the attempts, in both voiceover and dialogue, to convince us the film was imparting a message of any profundity whatsoever; biggest of all, the absence of any real internal logic. Is it conceivable that Jonas, who didn't look too unhappy at the start, would turn to Julia after one sexual knockback from Mette? More evidence of tension/resentment/waning of sexual or romantic passion between the two would have made his pursuit of the madness of/within Julia more credible. Also, is it remotely believeable that Jonas would have done what he did in the hospital, for which Dr. Dichmann later upbraided him (don't know how else to put it without spoiling!) which, if you think about it for even a moment, makes him, to put it mildly, utterly sick? And was Mette having a thing with Frank (gf and I disagree on this) ? Despite all of this, JALS is, strangely, extremely enjoyable! We gabbed about the film all the way home and thought it 21 quid well spent. If JALS doesn't tick any boxes for you, avoid. However, if you're even mildly intrigued by what you've read. def go see!

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