Prague

Rating:

* * * *

Verdict:

Sombre, but supremely intelligent Danish drama of a marriage slowly melting down. 

The impossibility of communication is the sustaining idea of this potent and intelligent Danish drama, a sombre yet exhilarating piece of work marred only by an ending which feels more like a fadeout than a deliberate decision.

The two main characters, Christoffer and Maja, are in the Czech capital of the title to collect the body of Christoffer's father, whom he last saw when he was 12. The couple, uneasily married after 14 years, are adrift in a foreign land where they cannot make themselves understood: when they ask for a plug adaptor and coffee, they get, respectively, an ironing board and beer.

Later, Christoffer will spend a lot of time with another character, holding Czech-English conversations in which neither participant understands a word the other is saying.

Thus marooned, Christoffer and Maja are thrust into an enforced intimacy that confronts them with the depth of their estrangement. In a series of scenes that seem to channel the late, great John Cassavetes, they discover things about themselves and each other which have remained hidden for a long time.

Mikkelsen - the blood-weeping baddie in the last Bond film - has become the leading man of choice in a string of such family dramas including the wonderful work of Susanne Bier (

Open Hearts, Brothers

). His brooding intensity can become a bit wearing, but it's alleviated by the storyline's involvement of two other characters: his father's former housekeeper (Plodkova) and lawyer (Navratil), each of whom in different ways unlock Christoffer's past.

"Life is hard," the lawyer is fond of telling Christoffer. "You bend it or you break." It's superfluous to say that any film in which that line is repeated often enough to become a bleak running gag is no comedy. But as an example of the secrets-and-lies dramas - the thinking-person's soap operas that have come out of Denmark in the past decade - this stands out.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Mads Mikkelsen, Stena Stengarde, Borivoj Navratil, Jana Plodkova

Director:

Ole Christian Madsen

Running time:

92 mins

Rating:

M (sex scenes & offensive language)

Screening:

Academy, Hollywood (Avondale), Waiheke, Victoria (Hamilton)