In Your Hands

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.