Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgard

Direction: Susanne Bier


You might remember Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre, the bad guy who wept blood in the last James Bond film, Casino Royale. Well, he's the lead in this fantastic Danish film After The Wedding, in which he plays Jacob, a do-gooder who abandoned his life in Copenhagen to work at an orphanage in India.

The film starts where Jacob is summoned back home to receive a large donation for the orphanage. On reaching Copenhagen, Jacob meets his benefactor, Jorgen, played by the excellent Swedish actor Rolf Lassgard, who promises a fat donation, and also invites Jacob to attend his daughter's wedding.

Jacob accepts the invitation but very reluctantly -- after all he's going to be a fish out of water at that fancy, black-tie affair -- but once there, he meets an old acquaintance who happens to be Jorgen's wife.

What happens after this is what forms the core of this story, an emotional roller-coaster ride that will touch your heart and break your heart in equal measure.

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Susanne Bier, After The Wedding is a strong character-driven drama -- it's been described in Europe as a melodrama, but it's nothing like the Bollywood melodramas we're used to.

The beauty of this film, After The Wedding lies in the fact that you can't figure it out even a good hour into the film. You think you know the characters, you think you understand what's going on, but as you discover eventually, you've been wrong all along.

Few films will tear your heart like this one does, forcing you to root for one of the characters but you'll still be unsure who to go with because each is so relatable.

Much of the credit for that must go to the excellent script by Bier and her collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen. And much of the credit must also go to the actors who play such layered roles so instinctively. The film's best performance, in my opinion, comes from Rolf Lassgard who's definitely got the tougher role.

He goes from brutish to tender with such precision, that it's a performance worth studying. Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar last year, After The Wedding is exactly the kind of film I'd recommend on an idle Sunday afternoon, so you have enough time later to think about it and talk about it because believe me, you'll want to.