Danish director Susanne Bier’s Oscar® winner (Best Foreign Language), less breakout than consolidation/recognition of her run of five preceding well-received titles in under a decade. (Bier likely best known here for the multi-part tv adaptation of John Le Carré’s THE NIGHT MANAGER/’17: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-night-manager-2016.html.) Superbly structured and economically handled, this many-sided two-family drama begins away from home, in Africa where a Doctors-Without-Borders type is patiently speeding his way thru scores of cases in a camp near some unspecified war zone. Admirable work, but it’s taken a toll back home in Denmark where he’s separating from his wife (an affair he’s written off but she hasn’t), but not their two boys, the eldest, about 12, an obviously great kid with a crooked smile, being horribly bullied (as a rat-faced Swede) in middle school. At the same time, a second family (disengaged father/resentful son) are dealing poorly with the death of the mother. And when this 12-yr-old son starts at the same school, he quickly bonds, even protects, the bullied kid. Only his ‘protection’ takes a violent course, bringing out untreated fissures in everyone’s personality that threaten all relationships. It’s a blister that won’t break without dangerous consequences. Even the level-headed doctor finds his limit for tolerance crossed back in Africa. Insightful, thought-provoking & heartbreaking (though Bier pulls back from the abyss); sentiment earned rather than taken. (NOTE: Family Friendly label on this one, but no younger than our 12-yr-old protagonists.)
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