Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Marie Bonnevie, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, May Anderson, Ulrich Thomsen
Susanne Bier is well known for her stylish if schematic melodramas – along the lines of BROTHERS and AFTER THE WEDDING. A SECOND CHANCE is another enjoyable, if cliched, collaboration with the dogma crew and regular scripter Anders Thomas Jensen (IN A BETTER WORLD).
The impossibly good-looking Nordic couple Andreas (Coster-Waldau) and Anne (Marie Bonnevie) share a designer beach house in the outskirts of Copenhagen with their new-born son Alexander. Meanwhile, Tristan (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his partner Sanne (May Anderson in debut) are slumming it up as intravenous drug abusers in an urban hovel with their neglected bab,y Sofus. However, it’s important at this stage not to draw too many conclusions on the perfect family versus the ‘lowlife’ one.
Police detective Andreas is on a drug-releated hunt for Tristan and is attempting to get Sofus into care, with the help of his partner Simon (Ulrich Thomsen). So far their attempts have proved unsuccessful but when tragedy intervenes, Andreas makes an error of judgement changing his life forever.
Motherhood and parenting are always at the heart of Bier’s narratives and A SECOND CHANCE is no different. There’s no harsher judge of women than a woman herself, as Bier proves one again by portraying her female characters as somehow lacking: Although Anne appears to be the perfect caring mother in her softly lit and freshly laundered surroundings, she is also neurotic, self-centred and suffering from postnatal depression and her mother (Ewa Frowling) is not much of a help on the childcare front. Sanne is so angel either, leaving Sofus rolling about in his own excrement as she catnaps through another dose of crystal meth or is it pethidine? Nikolaj Lie Kaas is powerful as an irresponsible dad but also a controlling, abusive husband.
The story really centres on Andreas and his integrity as a man of the law, versus his vulnerability as a new father, desperate to satisfy the woman he loves, his moral compass briefly skewed by the hormonally-charged state of becoming a new father. Strong performances are compelling and slightly manage to counterbalance the narrative’s slow crescendo of doom-laden melodrama, accompanied by a sinister score, gusty winds and the classic Nordic Noir negativity that increasingly threatens disaster in every rain-soaked frame. Even after the initial booboo made by Andreas, it’s clear that life will never be the same in this chilly tale of woe. MT
A SECOND CHANCE IS ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 MARCH 2015. SUSANNE BIER IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON AN ADAPTATION OF JOHN LE CARRE’S THE NIGHT MASTER WITH HUGH LAURIE AND TOM HIDDLESTON.