Lille soldat (2008)

Director:

Annette K. Olesen

Writer:

Kim Fupz Aakeson (writer)

Release Date:

14 November 2008 (Denmark)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A soldier returning from war is hired by her own father to drive his prostitutes around town. She calls upon herself to help one of them.

Plot Keywords:

Prostitute | African | Absent Father | Jaguar Car | Abusive Father

Awards:

2 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Trine Dyrholm	...	Lotte
Lorna Brown	...	Lily / Kimmie
Finn Nielsen	...	Far
Rasmus Botoft	...	Nabo
Thure Lindhardt	...	John
Henrik Prip	...	Henning
Jens Jørn Spottag	...	Fischer
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Victoria Agami	...	Daisy
Louisa Yaa Aisin	...	Pearl
Aske Bang	...	Tjener
Ramadan Huseini	...	Albansk mand
Lene Johansen	...	TV speaker (voice)
Henrik Jørgensen	...	Mekaniker
Nima Nabipour	...	Mand på bar
Søren Poppel	...	Voldelig kunde
Shanti Roney	...	Svensk forretningsmand

Also Known As:

Little Soldier (Europe: English title) (festival title) (International: English title)

Runtime:

Denmark:100 min

Country:

Denmark

Language:

English | Danish | Swedish

Color:

Color

Certification:

Argentina:16

Company:

Zentropa Productions

A moving - and surprising - psychological journey

How do you do some good in the world? And is it for the person you want to benefit? Or is it really about being honest with yourself? Little Soldier makes us face some of the hardest questions we may never want to answer. One is war. Another is human trafficking. As Harriet Harman pulls scare figures on trafficked sex workers out of a hat to boost her government's failing public support (and push through another 'tough' bill), this quiet Danish film digs to a level of reality that we maybe didn't want to visit.

A young, disillusioned female soldier returns from Afghanistan. Lotte's psychological numbness is with herself as much as with the world around her. With her own ability – or lack of it – to make a difference. To somehow make the world a better place. Beneath an incredibly powerful fighting frame, she yearns to re-discover her feminine kindness. But war has brutalised her. And when she returns home, the bond she hoped to discover with her father, throws her isolated, war-weary, and unemployed remnant of the woman she has become, against an ineffectual old man on civvy street. He runs a kindly escort business with trafficked women, exchanging a vanload every so often and keeping their passports in his safe.

It is all so horribly everyday. So horribly convincing. Chilling. Yet reality keeps unfolding like a series of Chinese boxes. Each revelation is more realistic than what has gone before. We reach a credible, emotionally charged plateau, only to have it swept from under our feet by an even more believable explanation of what is happening all around us.

Lotte befriends one of the prostitutes, Lily. Her father's favourite. He trusts Lotte to act as driver and bodyguard (a role which Lotte's military training lets her perform a little too well at times). The two women become close, realising they share similar psychological scars. They have become welded to a life they cannot leave. Saving another's soul becomes a heart-rending admission of one's own needs. Needs which can blind.

The brutal honesty of this film reminds me of another movie about war and violence, also directed by a woman (Kate Bigelow's, The Hurt Locker). Both films, without moralising, look at the psychological reality while depicting 'male' violence at its most hard-hitting. In Little Soldier, Lotte has been masculinised, first in a desperate attempt to get attention from her father, and then by being a soldier. Lotte and Lily have nothing but contempt for each other, yet their needs draw them ever closer together. Director Annette K. Olesen peels back the fabric of salvation – a drive that makes us want to save individuals or save the world. Worlds and individuals that are far less sure of their need to be saved than our need to save them. Says Oleson, "Saviours are good. And in fairy tales they are altruistic. But can they expect to be saved too? Can you save somebody who doesn't want salvation?" Little Soldier is another fine feather in the cap of Zentropa, the Danish film company founded in 1992 by director Lars von Trier. And while it has great depth, it is not aimed solely at the art house crowd. Heart-warming, profoundly moving, shocking and violent, Little Soldier is a film that will fight to stay in your memory.