REVIEWS Broken Reviewed by Mark Adams


Rufus Norris makes his feature debut with Broken, a deli- cately structured interweaving story that has at its core the tale of 11-year-old Skunk (newcomer Eloise Laurence), an innocent young girl at the start of her summer holidays who finds herself in the midst of a group of complex and often broken people. Norris is an award-winning theatre director and to a cer-


tain extent Broken, which is adapted from Daniel Clay’s 2008 novel, has the structure of a theatre production as it interlinks three disparate families who live on the same sub- urban street, with its subtle (and at times shocking) drama allowing room for a string of impressive performances. In the end Broken feels perhaps too self-consciously slight


and artistic with its visual and music cues obvious at times. But Laurence makes a delightful debut and is a really charm- ing presence as the sweet-natured Skunk. Skunk is friendly with all of her neighbours and fond of


Love Is All You Need Reviewed by Dan Fainaru


In her first outing since her Oscar-winning In A Better World, Susanne Bier and her co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen have come up with a natural born winner — a romantic comedy that pulls out all the stops, using all of the genre’s classic formulas. With a charmingly debonair Pierce Brosnan as one of the


leads and Trine Dyrholm, one of the finest Danish actresses of her generation, opposite him, Love Is All You Need is cer- tain to become one of the crowdpleasers of the season. Ida (Dyrholm), a hairdresser, is told that although her


chemotherapy treatment has been completed, it will take months before her cure is certain. Going home to her hus- band (Kim Bodnia), she finds him on the sofa having sex with the blonde floozy (Christiane Schaumburg-Müller) from the accounts department. Terribly hurt, she decides to put on a brave face and attend her daughter’s wedding in Italy… Ida’s daughter Astrid (Molly Blixt Egelind) and her future


husband Patrick (Sebastian Jessen), meanwhile, are already at the villa in Sorrento, preparing for the ceremony. Back in Copenhagen, Patrick’s father Philip (Brosnan), a fruit and vegetable tycoon who is the owner of the villa, has his birth- day celebrated by his loving staff before embarking for the wedding as well. At the airport, Ida backs her car into Philip’s luxurious lim-


ousine. This would probably be a bad way to get acquainted in real life, but anyone who has ever seen a romantic comedy is certain to guess that all the mildly nasty remarks they exchange in that first meeting are only temporary. Among the supporting characters are Philip’s blowsy sis-


ter-in-law Benedikte (a high-spirited Paprika Steen), who is loud, noisy and a past master of the faux pas; her alcoholic adolescent daughter from a previous marriage; a couple of Italian caretakers introducing the inevitable gay element into the picture; and quite a few more. Then there is the gorgeous villa, the adjoining lemon


grove, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets and plenty more besides. How and why all these people converge on the wedding doesn’t really matter too much as the plot is engi- neered carefully enough never to appear nonsensical, while the sets and scenery are glorious and the cinematography is glowing. It would be fair to say that nothing really surprising or


original takes place here, but Dyrholm’s eyes shine every time she turns them on the camera and if there is one thing wrong with Brosnan, it is that he never appears to be as bad as his character is reputed to be.


n 8 Screen International at the Zurich Film Festival September 23-25, 2012 GALA PREMIERES


Den. 2012. 112mins Director Susanne Bier Production company ZentropaEntertainment29 International sales TrustNordisk, www.trustnordisk.com Producers Sisse Graum Jorgensen, Vibeke Windelov Screenplay Susanne Bier, AndersThomas Jensen Cinematography Morten Soborg EditorsPernille Bech Christensen, Morten Egholm Production designer: Peter Grant Music Johan Soderqvist Main castTrine Dyrholm, Pierce Brosnan, Molly Blixt Egelind, Sebastian Jessen, Paprika Steen, Kim Bodnia, Christiane Schaumburg- Müller, Micky Skeel Hansen


Rick (Robert Emms), a slightly unstable young man who lives with his parents in the house opposite. Skunk is shocked when another neighbour, Mr Oswald (Rory Kin- near), who lives with his three rude and precocious daugh- ters next door, strides from his house and attacks Rick. As her summer holiday starts, so Skunk’s innocence starts


to be chipped away. Her brother Jed (Bill Milner) warns her how dreadful her new school will be; Rick is taken to an institution to recover from the incident; her au pair Kasia (Zana Marjanovic) breaks off her relationship with the gen- ial Mike (Cillian Murphy), while her father Archie (Tim Roth) is attentive and kind, but always busy with work. Skunk, who is a diabetic, makes occasional trips to a


nearby junkyard (full of ‘broken’ vehicles) with her brother and a young friend and, as a return to school beckons, the warmth of childhood gives way to a more fractured sense of her life as she is bullied by Mr Oswald’s three daughters Susan (Rosalie Kosky-Hensman), Saskia (Faye Daveney) and Sunrise (the delightfully tough Martha Bryant), and finds out her father is having a relationship with Kasia. Broken spirals into some delightfully staged scenes of


darkness as the still-troubled Rick returns home to his overly attentive parents, and Skunk is placed in a terrible situation and subconsciously has to make a real life-or-death decision. Shot at times with a sense of magical realism, the film is charmingly off-kilter though its eventual lapse into drama lacks the shock value one might expect. It is, though, a bold and nicely sustained debut.


INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM — COMPETITION


UK. 2012. 90mins Director RufusNorris Production companies CubaFilms, BBCFilms, BFI,LipSyncProductions, Bill KenwrightFilms International sales Wild Bunch, www.wildbunch.biz Producers DixieLinder, Tally Garner,Nick Marston, Bill Kenwright Executive producers Joe Oppenheimer,Norman Berry Screenplay MarkO’Rowe, based on the novel by DanielClay Cinematography Rob Hardy Editor Victoria Boydell Production designer Kave Quinn MusicElectric Wave Bureau Main castEloise Laurence,Tim Roth,Cillian Murphy, Rory Kinnear, RobertEmms, Zana Marjanovic,Clare Burt, DenisLawson, Bill Milner, Rosalie Kosky-Hensman, Martha Bryant,Faye Daveney


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