Ole Bornedal: Director
If you watched ten to twenty films a week, would you go to see a film entitled "Just Another Love Story"?
No surprise, the New York press did not show up for this screening, other than myself and one other brave soul. If the film had been entitled, "Not Just anther love Story" maybe the Scandinavian House would have had a full compliment of press to preview their forthcoming award winning film. But then that would have compromised the intent of the Director.
Ole Bornedal is a gifted, seasoned film director who displays in this professional work of art his disdain for Hollywood, for the way films that are about love gone awry are done. That said, there are also moments of extraordinary brilliance, the photography is often breath taking and the back and forth of the narrative is done with a magnificent finesse. But the ending goes on and on for almost seven minutes and the message is too thin to support such a protracted termination.
One wonders if we are made to suffer this endless ending because the Director is angry with us, the Hollywood audience or because he doesn't know how to end his films or the protracted ending is saying, as does the film, we are never satisfied. We always want more and more and in the end, that thirst for more destroys the value of what is; something akin to the American tendency to over eat. Food tastes good on the first helping but by the third, it is nauseating.
Plot: Pretty single wealthy girl and good family man/husband/father to two perfect young children meet, engage in an emotional protracted and almost promising exchange before circumstances ( the return of a former boyfriend of ill repute and heinous behavior) force them apart . And true to the state of the art, of film noir(black) all characters end up less than they started; marginalized by the powers that be and our superior knowledge of what makes a man, a man: a woman, a woman.
Recommendation: Mixed. I hated the film while I saw it but in retrospect, it gets better and better. Of particular note is the violent act that at first seems justified and then turns into something ridiculous, over the top, a violent moment of "Descent" revisited.
Opens January 9: in New York City
Village Cinema
Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective
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