nsA wise and decent film from Ireland Norway With two outstanding actors; Directed by Maria Sudahl, it is about love, grief and intimacy and is conceived at a high creative level. Yet to me it is not fully ignited by the real passion or genuine anger he points to.
Andrea Broin Hovig plays Anja, a successful forty-year-old choreographer with an international career who is in a relationship with Tomas. Stellan Skarsgard, and together they have a large and loving step family. Last Christmas, Anja was completely free of lung cancer, but a year later has come back critically with metastasis to her brain; He has to undergo surgery but with poor prognosis.
Yet painfully, the amount of hope offered to Anja varies with different doctors. She’s been asked to emphasize this statistically negligible lack of hope when talking to her kids, but it might encourage everyone to engage in magical thinking about the whole thing. And now Tomas says that he wants to marry Anja before the operation. Should he take comfort and hope from this? Or is this planned wedding closer to a bizarre funeral ceremony, a gesture that actually underscores Tomas’ true belief that she is going to die, and his infuriating reluctance to marry her before that?
It’s a priceless intent study of two men who, despite their large families, are completely devoted to their respective careers and perhaps neglect their emotional lives: and yet there’s something about drama to me. I am not exposed, and almost emotional at the last moment. But both Howig and Skarsgard are great.