Review of After the Wedding (2006) by Grant B — 09 Aug 2011

After having seen Susanne Bier's latest film, "In A Better World" (which won the Oscar for best international film), I had expected a lot from her past work.

Actor Mads Mikkelsen is in the lead role as a man working as a humanitarian aid in India, but he leaves back to Denmark to receive further funding for his operations. While in Denmark, his life gets flipped on its side as he desires to return to India, but finds himself reunited with a former lover and her new family.

This movie really speaks for itself, and still follows many of the Dogme 95 rules (which looks and works beautifully), but the storyline (though interesting) had far too many obvious parallels that were oddly never addressed. It would have been fantastic if Mads Mikkelsen's character, with his experiences, could have left an impact and mended together a broken end in the family that he interacts with in Denmark, but instead his character seems to not even comprehend that he could fix a young marriage from dissolving.

This is a great actor's film with fantastic performances, but acting alone cannot make a great movie. Though I do recommend this film, the movie feels like a test-film for Susanne Bier's far superior film "In A Better World" from this year.