Strictly DOGME and strictly a dog. A Family Reunion from Hell tale that was one of the first DOGME projects, cinematic rules you had to follow like some artistic honesty Party Line to find truth & purity by foreswearing technical embellishments that didn’t suit the barebones style. (Or was it the budget?) So, all natural lighting, lots of handheld camera work, only diegetic music, unity of time, place & action (wait that’s Classic Greek Plays); well, you get the idea: Back to the Basics; F/X or optical printing unwelcome. That last a given as this film ‘captured’ rather than filmed, using an early, resolution-challenged digital system. (You might accept the grain and low-light deficiencies, but why all the overexposure? It’s all set into motion by the return of a Prodigal Son (long a success in Paris as a restauranteur), now come home not to praise Paterfamilias on his 60th birthday but to bury him . . . with the unvarnished truth. That’d be eldest-born Christian, arriving just in time to miss his twin sister’s funeral. So, with friends & relatives gathered in Denmark to toast Father at the large hotel estate the family owns, Christian waits his turn to offer a toast and drop long delayed bombshells. They detonate, too; yet the party goes on! Social conventions taking precedent. But wait, more atrocities to spill: abuse/culpability. Maybe he’s delusional, jealous of the family that stayed in town, like his abominable kid brother, who leads the tipsy throng with fist-first physical threats, and racist singalongs (a middle sister has a Black date). With choruses and courses yet to come, probably best to toss big brother Christian out of the house. Technically, dramatically, psychologically, the whole works hopelessly dated, even as a corrective to Hollywood excesses of the time. And perhaps everyone in here knew it, including writer/director Thomas Vinterberg who had loosened up considerably long before his recent success with ANOTHER ROUND (DRUK)/’20.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Rinse the taste out of your mouth with the big family gatherings that open Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY & ALEXANDER (the tv cut) or in Arnaud Desplechin’s A CHRISTMAS TALE/’08. There are of course hundreds more, though for some reason, Hollywood attempts at disastrous Thanksgiving family gatherings are best avoided. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/un-conte-de-noel-christmas-tale-2008.html
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