Reconstruction Movie Review:


This ethereal Danish drama gets seriously under the skin even though it's virtually impossible to nail down in any solid way. And while the gifted filmmakers have a great time confusing us, what emerges is startlingly powerful. Alex (Kaas) is a young man who feels like he's in a rut with his girlfriend Simone (Bonnevie). Then he meets Aimee (also Bonnevie), who's married but up for a fling. As he begins to fall for Aimee, he realises that he, quite literally, cannot go home again. His flat doesn't seem to exist anymore, and his friends no longer recognise him. Unable to figure out what's going on, he plans to run away with Aimee. Perhaps the key to all this is actually held by Aimee's husband August (Henriksson), a writer who seems to be controlling the story like some sort of god.

As August says at the beginning: "Remember, it's all film. It's all a construction. But it still hurts." The obvious parallel is David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, a bewildering tale that somehow taps emotional resonance despite the fact that we're never sure what's going on. It's the same here, as scenes rewind and are seen from another perspective ... with a different conclusion. Clips and flashbacks, overhead tracking shots, camera quakes and a general dark tone keep it very confusing indeed. And yet there's something sharply coherent in the emotional through-line--the dreamlike idea that we would fall in love with the same person over and over again, even if we met them in different circumstances. At the centre, Kaas is superb as a guy thrown suddenly into the Twilight Zone, floundering for something to grab hold of. And Bonnevie is excellent in twin roles that are easy to keep track of, and both surprisingly moving. This is a beautiful, unsettling and mind-bending film that touches on ideas of attraction, identity, free will and destiny. Maddeningly elusive, but also intensely intriguing.



Rich Cline

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