REVIEWS
GENERATION
Den-Swe. 2011. 84mins Director Simon Staho Production company Zentropa Entertainments5, Anagram Produktion, XX Film International sales TrustNordisk, www.
trustnordisk.com Producers Jonas Frederiksen, Martin Persson Screenplay Simon Staho, Peter Birro Cinematography Sebastian Wintero Editor Anders Villadsen Main cast Emma Sehested Hoeg, Gustav Hintze, Victoria Carmen Sonne, Anton Honik
Love Is In The Air REVIEWED BY MIKE GOODRIDGE
Simon Staho, the Danish director who has made a name for himself with intense, brooding dramas, turns in a startling new direction with Love Is In The Air (Magi I Luften), a pop musical about horny teens that is brash, abrasive and raunchy. Set over the course of one night, this fast-cut, uber-stylised affair requires viewer patience to engage with its irritating young protagonists, but the film eventually finds a rhythm of sorts and the charac- ters some tender moments. The film will find favour with younger, hipper buyers who
might identify a cult youth value for the film in their territory. Older arthouse buyers who might have relished Staho’s elegant former work will find it a cacophonous assault on the senses. The fact all the songs are in Danish will not enhance its inter-
national chances, though any teen in any country would warm to its brazen sexuality and on-your-sleeve romanticism. Staho has made some very clear choices here, going for a
visual style as vulgarly lit and dressed as Starlight Express or The Wiz and a cutting technique that is the editing equivalent of attention-deficit disorder, with short scenes and snatches of singing rather than full numbers. Combine that with central characters who are pretty obnoxious for most of the film, the effect is in-your-face to say the least. But Staho, an expert in probing portraits of human behav-
iour, cannot keep the shallowness going for the whole film and somewhere in the second half, the photogenic kids start to shed their attitude and reveal the vulnerabilities beneath. It ends in a welcome warm glow. A singer with ambitions for a successful career, the pushy
7-9 NOV CPH:FORUM n 16 Screen International at the Berlinale February 10, 2012
INTERNATIONAL F I N A N C I N G F O R U M
Lina (Hoeg) is determined to bed rock star Niklas Ravn so that he can help her into the business. Her three friends Daniel (Hintze), Therese (Sonne) and Stefan (Honik) dance around her as she pursues Ravn and his entourage through a night tab- leau of streets, bars, clubs and hotels. Daniel is a sensitive boy in a toreador outfit hopelessly in love
with Lina; Therese — who is celebrating her 16th birthday on this particular night — wants to lose her virginity to Stefan; and Stefan, for all his cocky machismo, is dying to come out to all, and especially to Daniel. As in many musicals, the plot here is merely the candyfloss
skeleton on which the style and music is constructed, and the characters more cyphers than flesh-and-blood humans. But if the film has no soul to speak of, there is visual and aural pleas- ure to be had along the way.
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