Saw this sweet little comedy movie ½ a year ago, and just this night saw it get the Oscar 2003 for best short feature. Congratulations!
The movie is a humorous look at the racial discrimination issues in present-day Denmark. Due to a screw-up in the state bureaucracy, our young blonde protagonist - a Dane called Lars Hansen - finds himself obliged to attend Danish language classes for immigrants. He balks at the prospect, but ends up going, disguised as an Arab immigrant, to help out the teacher, a Danish woman and a former school acquaintance of his, who needs an extra pupil for the language class to be continued. Funny complications follow...
The tone of the movie is nice and subdued, not too pretentious and with believable characters. It relies heavily on Danish plays on words that might not translate too well (I don't know since I watched the movie in Danish. A good translator could do the job, I guess). I like the protagonist, he has a wide-eyed innocence and a basic optimism, "the little guy" one can identify with. He and the woman teacher basically carry the movie, but there are some amusing little secondary roles as well.
The cinematography is professional and has a clean, aesthetic "Nordic" tone to it. It is also irreverent and playful, as in the creative use of split-screens (during telephone conversations).
It's a deserved Oscar, check it out.
- No spoilers in the following description -
The movie is a humorous look at the racial discrimination issues in present-day Denmark. Due to a screw-up in the state bureaucracy, our young blonde protagonist - a Dane called Lars Hansen - finds himself obliged to attend Danish language classes for immigrants. He balks at the prospect, but ends up going, disguised as an Arab immigrant, to help out the teacher, a Danish woman and a former school acquaintance of his, who needs an extra pupil for the language class to be continued. Funny complications follow...
The tone of the movie is nice and subdued, not too pretentious and with believable characters. It relies heavily on Danish plays on words that might not translate too well (I don't know since I watched the movie in Danish. A good translator could do the job, I guess). I like the protagonist, he has a wide-eyed innocence and a basic optimism, "the little guy" one can identify with. He and the woman teacher basically carry the movie, but there are some amusing little secondary roles as well.
The cinematography is professional and has a clean, aesthetic "Nordic" tone to it. It is also irreverent and playful, as in the creative use of split-screens (during telephone conversations).
It's a deserved Oscar, check it out.