Films So Good

Many years before Night Manager (2016) and The Undoing (2020), Susanne Bier directed Efter Brylluppet, most well known with the english title After the Wedding. The movie had such a great success that an american version with Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore and was released in 2019.

The story is about Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen), a manager of an orphanage in India that he has to return to Denmark in order to acquire a donation from a wealthy man named Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard). Their meeting ends up with Jorgen inviting Jacob to his daughter Anna’s upcoming wedding. Everything looks suspicious, when Jacob discovers that the Jorgen’s wife is Helen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), his never forgotten ex-girlfriend. But this is only the beginning of a life-altering family secret. In the marriage’s speech, Anna refers that’s not actually Jorgen’s biological daughter and Jacob realises that this isn’t a coincidence anymore.

“After the wedding” puts the relationships and the feelings of these four people under the microscope. The main characters have to expose their deepest weaknesses and deny their current life in order to pass in a new reality. Can this new reality lead them to redemption?

The movie seems boring, but it isn’t . The plot is quite captivate and the tone of mystery maintains viewer’s excitement. The stronger advantage of the movie, though, is the perfomances. And maybe we knew that Mads Mikkelsen is a great actor, but Rolf Lassgard’s performance (A man called Ove) is one of the greatest in the European cinema.

Movie Rating: 81/100

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