Just as a couple of brighteyed young Danes (Sonja Richter, Nikolaj Lie Kaas) are about to seal their union, a car smacks into him, leaving him paralysed from the neck down: one of those incidents to make you ask, is there a God?
Perhaps not, but there is a surgeon (Mads Mikkelsen). He is married to the woman (Paprika Steen) who drove the car.
This man, unaware that he is nearing a mid-life crisis, meets the girl to comfort her and, of course, finds comfort himself, shares his midmorning apple ("Good for your blood sugar") and soon, is her lover.
Susanne Bier's film is a pretty ordinary chapter of everyday sin and, it has to be admitted, pretty misery-making.
Open Hearts turns relentlessly and emotionally inwards, examining the feelings of all the people in it as if dutifully fingering every bead on a rosary, yet oddly ignoring some of the more practical issues that might be the first to occur to men - like insurance claims.
Had the film been American, it is a fair bet the lover wouldn't have been a doc offering his apple, but a lawyer
bearing compensation forms. There is a sense of autobiography about some of the film, which lends it emotional confidence when feelings of guilt, self-contempt and hesitant reconciliation are examined.
Mikkelsen's surgeon has the hardest role. As well as two-timing his wife and young family, the man has the backbone of a worm: he wriggles with shame. A scene in a furniture store, when he gets a fit of the giggles as he and his mistress test the mattresses, misfires badly in attempting to lighten-up the mood of Scandinavian angst.
What is truer is how the victim, the poor quadriplegic, is progressively forgotten as the others' selfinvolvement proves more compulsive than compassion. This clinical truth is uncomfortable, but infinitely preferable to sticking an emotional Band-Aid over the wound.
The director belongs to the Danish Dogme group of film-makers, and exhibits her "Certificate of Virginity" in front of the credit titles, testifying to the unadorned way she shot, recorded, directed and edited her movie. Yet, except for a few fuzzy feet of topographical Copenhagen, it looks like any normal picture. And why not? Dogme was really only a way of grabbing media attention. Post-Dogme film-makers can deliver their own message.
Open Hearts (Elsker Dig For Evigt)
Cert: 15
