A man celebrates his sixtieth birthday with friends, relatives, his wife and children. This is a film about love, hate, the icy charm of the bourgeoisie and the loving arms of the chambermaid. Danish dialogue.
Echoes of country-house comedies like Jean Renoir's La Règle du Jeu and such savage social satires as Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie ring around the first feature made under film-making collective Dogme 95's “vow of chastity”. A Danish patriarch celebrates his 60th birthday, but his son decides to reveal a few family secrets. But while the severity of the themes and the immediacy of the video imagery give the disastrous family reunion the same sort of visceral thrill induced by the first films of the nouvelle vague, this is more a shakycam soap opera than a mould-breaking masterpiece. However, any film that can tumble complacent chattering-class audiences out of their seats has to be applauded.
Radio Times
