Guest Review – Trine Dyrholm pulls out all the stops as a bipolar mother in a dysfunctional family drama | film

DActor Anish Trin Dyrholm gives a magnetic performance with all guns blazing in this deeply painful, uncomfortable but also at times uncomfortably funny film from writer-director Mads Mengele; It’s about a dysfunctional family and shot in a free-handed style with plenty of looming extreme close-ups, a film in the spirit of Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 classic Festen.

Karl (Simon Benberg) and Emilie (Mette Klaksten) are a young Danish couple with a new baby, and they have just arrived at a seaside hotel where they are hosting a secular, humanist “naming ceremony” for a large crowd of relatives, one of whom has brought a guitar to perform a song for the infant – a Richard Curtis touch. Karl’s sister (Josephine Park) is there, as are Emily’s parents (Petrin Agger and Peter Gantzler). The only person who isn’t is Karl’s formidable, emotionally volatile mother Vibeke (played by Dyrholm), who suffers from bipolar disorder and has already been sectioned once.

Carl is afraid of his mother, angry with her, and cutting off contact with him – and seems willing to blame her for behavioral problems on the basis that she doesn’t take her medication and has caused countless chaotic scenes. However, to his horror, he discovered that his sister had gone ahead and said goodbye anyway, and couldn’t bear to tell Karl; She’s the one who has to take care of Vibeke and probably resents Carl not doing his share of the heavy lifting. She also knows that she will have to deal with the repercussions of a snub of this magnitude.

So Vibeke arrives, delightfully friendly and festive, but also regal and imperious, and clearly suspicious that the invitation, coming from her daughter rather than Karl, doesn’t exactly entitle her to VIP status. She is a “guest,” a stranger who is not particularly welcome. The blue touch paper was lit up for a shocking fireworks display. Dyrholm’s Vibeke is lively and charming but also unnervingly inappropriate, with a superficial sense of boundaries: she playfully slaps her daughter for berating her in a way that seems to lift the curtain on the actual violence.

Vibeke holds it together long enough for Karl – an excellent, understated performance from Simon Bennebjerg – to step back a bit and let Vibeke get involved. But the proceedings include the baby being ‘baptised’ at sea, and when an increasingly emotional Vibeke takes charge of this, the film must be watched through your fingers.

There is something very poignant here: a family scene of resentment and anger, in sharp contrast to the innocence of a child. Needless to say, Vibeke went through what these young parents are going through now when her children were toddlers. Her depression, her agitation, her sense of injustice – these are not just symptoms, but real parts of her identity. However, Vibeke makes life impossible for others and herself. It’s a smart and highly watchable performance from Dyrholm.