Danish director Susanne Bier has a knack for making melodramatic contrivances seem like slices of life. The story of a loner who travels to Copenhagen to meet the benefactor who could save his Indian orphanage is positively novelette-ish — and becomes even more so when he’s invited to a wedding where a re-encounter with his past begins to shape his future.
But Bier is less interested in specific events than in how the characters respond to revelations and ramifications. Thus, she shoots much of the action in jittery close-ups to heighten the intensity of Mads Mikkelsen’s relationships with his old flame, her manipulative husband and their cosseted daughter.
