After a whirlwind romance, Astrid and Patrick are getting married in Patrick's old family villa in Italy which has remained fairly deserted after his mother died when he was small. Astrid's mother Ida (Trina Dyrholm) is, hopefully, in remission from breast cancer following a mastectomy: when she walks in on husband Lief doing the horizontal mambo with bookkeeper Thilde, she travels from Denmark to Italy without him, having (literally) bumped into Patrick's father Philip (Pierce Brosnan) at the airport. Businessman Philip is an unhappy man, having never resolved the anger he still feels at his wife's pointless accidental death. Among the other guests are Lief (who has travelled the following day and, insensitively, brought Thilde) and Philip's late wife's sister Benedikte, a woman capable of staggeringly crass and damaging comments made with complete obliviousness to their effects. And Patrick has some issues which need to be resolved before the wedding can take place.
Director Susanne Bier marshals her various plot threads and (except for Brosnan) Danish cast well as this gentle drama unfolds. There is nothing earth-shattering here, just real life, shown to us with compassion and humour. In Lief, Thilde and Benedikte, there are three wonderfully funny monsters, yet they too are human: we squirm at what they do, but we believe it at the same time, and understand that what we are seeing is selfishness not malice.
All the performances are good, but Brosnan (being gently unwound from his anger) is better than he has been for a long time, and Trina Dyrholm's Ida is both delightful and powerfully moving, in an understated performance which shows both range and courage.
The audience for this film (which features a mixture of English and subtitled Danish dialogue, about half and half) was mostly what one might call "women of a certain age" who were there, I suspect, for Mr Brosnan (whose hair colouring varies - maybe he hit the Grecian 2000 before the trip to Italy). As they filtered into the row behind me, and the chicken house cackling overpowered the ads and trailers, I felt ominous forebodings. Fortunately, they were silent throughout the movie: they enjoyed it very much, and so did I.
Director Susanne Bier marshals her various plot threads and (except for Brosnan) Danish cast well as this gentle drama unfolds. There is nothing earth-shattering here, just real life, shown to us with compassion and humour. In Lief, Thilde and Benedikte, there are three wonderfully funny monsters, yet they too are human: we squirm at what they do, but we believe it at the same time, and understand that what we are seeing is selfishness not malice.
All the performances are good, but Brosnan (being gently unwound from his anger) is better than he has been for a long time, and Trina Dyrholm's Ida is both delightful and powerfully moving, in an understated performance which shows both range and courage.
The audience for this film (which features a mixture of English and subtitled Danish dialogue, about half and half) was mostly what one might call "women of a certain age" who were there, I suspect, for Mr Brosnan (whose hair colouring varies - maybe he hit the Grecian 2000 before the trip to Italy). As they filtered into the row behind me, and the chicken house cackling overpowered the ads and trailers, I felt ominous forebodings. Fortunately, they were silent throughout the movie: they enjoyed it very much, and so did I.