Movies of the Week
After the Wedding, Journey to Armenia
See it or skip it? This week's new movie releases By Paul Matthews
After the Wedding
Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, Brothers) is a master at using contrived melodramatic plot structures to place her characters in emotionally heightened states. Were it not for the myriad dramatic bull’s eyes she hits throughout the course of the Oscar-nominated After the Wedding, the liberties Bier takes with her audience’s suspension of disbelief would be downright indictable. The film begins in Bombay, where Jacob (Casino Royale’s Mads Mikkelsen) struggles to run an orphanage and food aid program. His Jesuitical zeal and determination are an ill-fitting mask, hiding deep and unidentified psychological scars. One day, Jacob learns a billionaire Danish CEO (Rolf Lassgård) has offered the money needed to keep his programs afloat. The only catch: Jacob has to visit the potential benefactor in Copenhagen, a city to which he has sworn never to return. When he arrives, Jacob discovers the billionaire’s wife, Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen), is his former lover—the very woman, in fact, who has kept him away from town so long. When the CEO mysteriously insists that Jacob stay for the marriage of his daughter, after which he will be more equipped to decide about his investment, Bier unleashes a sequence of life-altering revelations and twists that would dizzy even a Desperate Housewife. The acting is astonishing, however, and Mikkelsen, in particular, achieves moments of jaw-dropping, stomach-churning brilliance. A potent, heart-rending examination of responsibility and shame. WAIT FOR THE REPS
After the Wedding is now playing at the Cumberland Theatre, 159 Cumberland St.
