The first fame to the Danish director Ole Bornedal came along with the premiere of his author's thriller with an unusual plot ' Night Watchman' (1994). This tape soon attracted overseas investors and the film company 'Dimension Films' attracted Ole Bornedal for the filming of the Hollywood remake, which was released in 1997 with Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette, Josh Brolin and Nick Nolty in the lead roles. Then Bornedal returns to Denmark, where he works with different genres: in 1999, the thriller ' Deep Waters' filmed for television; then the drama ' I Am Dina' (2002), which was nominated for best film by the award ' Amanda Awards' then Bornedal directs the film aggregate and rattling in the genre sense ' Replace' (2007); and in 2009, the thriller 'Save Us from the Bright.' And after that, Bornedal again receives an offer from North America to make a horror film ' Casket of the Curse'. With a budget of $14 million, it raises more than $85 million at the global box office, although reviews have been mixed.
And again Ole Bornedal after a trip to the United States returns to his native country and again works with different genres: with criminal drama ' Killers from Nibe' (2016), with musical and dramatic biopic ' While I live' (2018) and military-historical drama ' Shadow in my eyes' (2021). But among all these films was not noted dramatic psychothriller & #39; Story of someone else's love' (2007), but it will go more detailed. And, as it happens most often, Ole Bornedal independently wrote the script for this film. And the main role was invited Dane Anders V. Bertelsen, who played for Lone Sherfig in the melodrama 'Italian for beginners' (2000). The company Bertelsen was made by the Swedish Rebecca Hemse, who starred in the horror film ' The Spirit of the Drowning' (2004) from director Mikael Hofström. In addition to them, Nikolai Li Kaas appeared on the set, who received the main Danish film award ' Bodil' for best supporting actor in the scandalous film ' Idiots' (1998) from Lars von Trier himself. And also in ' Stories of someone else's love' played by Charlotte Fich.
Hero Anders V. Bertelsen in ' Stories of someone else's love' named Jonas. He is happily married to Mette (Charlotte Fich) and together they are raising a child. And Jonas works as a photographer in the criminal department, where his friend Frank (Dejan Chukic) also works. And lately, Jonas has begun to experience a bit of a spoon. But one day, by coincidence and pushed by his own curiosity, Jonas comes to the hospital ward, where a girl named Julia (Rebekah Hemse) appeared, and her numerous and wealthy relatives take Jonas for Yulia's boyfriend named Sebastian, who has never been seen in the eyes. Jonas decides to scatter his life a little and submissively accepts another person’s image, but soon falls in love with Julia, who after waking up suffers from amnesia and partial loss of vision. Jonas gradually literally turns into Sebastian, not able to spend a day without Julia, almost forgetting about the family. But sooner or later his deception was to be revealed, and it would entail the dangerous consequences of force majeure. . .
First of all, I would like to pay tribute to Ole Bornedal for a very unusual plot of the thriller ' The Story of Alien Life'. It would be possible to calculate some plot moves in advance, but the scriptwriter tried to make the film almost devoid of triviality and templates. It is worth noting the strong camera work of Dan Laustsen. With the help of it, the harsh atmosphere of the film was conveyed, and after editing ' The Story of Someone Else's Love' it turned out that Jonas himself photographed moments of his life, so in a sense the film is staged as a clip like a slide show. Someone this may scare, but when you immerse yourself in all the events ' Stories of someone else's love' which grow like a snowball, you already understand that you can not take your eyes off the screen. Although on the other hand, there is a feeling that everything is going to a very terrible and tragic ending, and all the sympathy that appears at the beginning of the film for Jonas disappears and you already realize that he ruins not only his life, but also the lives of everyone who was nearby. . .
The most suspense comes in the final third ' Stories of someone else's love', so if you suddenly decide to get acquainted with this dramatic psychothriller Ole Bornedal, then wait for the finale, where the plot of the film loops and all not quite understood scenes acquire a semantic load, creating a strong and holistic plot. Non-standard production may not please everyone, but it has its own metaphorical reference to the main character. And each actor fully conveyed his image, especially the appearance of the character from Nikolai Li Kaas, which definitely feels the fear and tense atmosphere. In general, a very decent Danish thriller, which can be recommended to numerous fans of the genre. At least for the fact that it is quite unusual.
Once in such films loved to star Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart. Cool noirs with a confusing plot, unexpected twists and with a woman, Femme Fatale with a baggage of dangerous secrets. As attractive as it is deadly without even knowing it. "Always look for a woman..." is the last conscious thought of a man snuggled with his back to the planet and pointed open, unseen eyes to the night sky, mourning him with a mournful, endless rain. So begins the criminal drama thriller of the Danish director Ole Bornedal “The Story of Someone Else’s Love”, a postmodern neo-noir with genre self-reflection and conscious references to many films past and present.
In the dark detective of Bornedal there are all the expected ingredients of the beloved genre. Sharp plot twists based on the impulsive choice of the protagonist, paved the way to hellish inevitability. A mysterious young woman with a dark past, which she has forgotten as a result of a concussion received in a fatal collision of several cars at a busy intersection. A sinister stranger, an integral part of her past, neither letting go nor forgiving. Cold desert rainy landscapes and closed doors, persistently repeated in dreams and hiding dangerous secrets. Violent and brutal murders and beatings, punctuated by explicit erotic scenes. Infinitely far from happy ending. But, taking advantage of the familiar elements and conventions of the genre, Ole Bornedal pushed its boundaries to convey to the viewer his main idea: each of us has hidden dreams and a passionate need for self-realization, the opportunity for which life provides very rarely. In a gloomy whimsical noir, Bornedal reflects on desires, fantasies, all-consuming passions, bothering the soul, but deeply hidden or forgotten for the time being. In reality, they never disappear without a trace, but only patiently wait for an accidental spark to burn into an insatiable, all-burning flame.
Jonas, an ordinary resident of a big city, a loving husband and father, dreamed of filming the beauty of the world from his youth. Flying in a helicopter and photographing the ground below. He became a chronicler of Death, capturing its countless faces. He has an unusual job. He's a forensic photographer. The spark that sparked the fire in Jonas’s soul was a sense of guilt towards Yulia, a young woman who had been in a terrible accident, after she turned abruptly to avoid crashing into his stalled car at the intersection with the whole family inside. While visiting Yulia in the hospital, Jonas is gradually drawn into involuntary lies, introducing himself to the family of a comatose girl, her boyfriend, whom she met while traveling in Southeast Asia. Jonas’s friend, an experienced police officer, warns him against questionable choices and ill-considered decisions that often leave people with only a contour on the ground marked with a white ribbon of C.S.I. employees and a posthumous photograph. But Jonas readily tries on someone else’s life and someone else’s love, finding them perfect for him, seeing them as an opportunity to break free from everyday routine and a chance to start all over again, from the red line. Forget pictures of dead children.
Ole Bordenal's film begins with a dedication to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and moves through time using flashbacks. Close-ups of the main characters are often superimposed on scenes of their memories, which helps to reveal and better understand their inner world and motives. The manner and tonality in which A Stranger's Love Story is filmed lends it a depth of psychological film exploration of human nature, as if Ingmar Bergman decided to create noir in the atmosphere of Hitchcock's Vertigo with the erotic overtones of Almodovar's Talk to Her, borrowing the plot plot plot from the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping. As a result, “The Story of Someone Else’s Love” develops into a penetrating film-thinking about the impossibility of understanding even between the closest people, about inner loneliness, about the desire to gain freedom from assumed obligations and responsibility, from oneself. Jonas may repeat, following David Locke, the hero of Michelangelo Antonioni’s existential drama, Profession: Reporter: “I was a different person, but I produced a trade-in.” And the main theme in the cool noir of Ole Bordenal, who managed to talk about love, the crisis of the modern family, and about alienation in modern society, is the rejection of one’s individuality, the acceptance of someone else’s identity as the only way to escape the quiet despair in which most people lead their lives. No man is an island in himself; every man is a part of the continent, a part of the land. Appropriating someone else’s life and substitution of identity means that the new owner also accepts those threads, fetters and chains that connected them with the world before he made the trade-in. However dangerous, sinister and deadly they may be. Escape from himself to another person turns out to be a bitter illusion, a sweet-sounding siren song that lured Jonah irrevocably into the womb of a giant whale.
A very difficult movie was shown to us by the Danish director Ole Bornedal. It turned out a slow, gloomy, painted in cold tones film. The title of this film contains the whole essence: this story of someone else’s life and love, in which Jonas is an intruder. Interfering with foreign relations, the main character begins to live not his own life. Jonas becomes Sebastian, and that seems to suit him. Now in his soul rages passion and invented love for Julia. Jonas is uninterested in his own life, wife and children: he succumbs to a strange desire to be a completely different person.
This story is a clear example of how interfering in other people’s relationships can lead to very bad consequences, especially when everything is controlled by lies. Jonas could tell Yulia and her family at any time that it was a mistake, that he was not Sebastian at all, but apparently playing another person at some point became interesting and exciting. It seems that the forensic photographer did not even play, but lived a new life, and he liked it.
Ole Bornedal shot an interesting drama with elements of a thriller. The film shows the problems faced by many spouses after a long life together. This is a kind of survival manual in everyday life and grayness. A simple collision with a car was an exciting journey for Jonas.
This is a good European cinema, which can suppress its gloom, but it is still worth watching this story to the end.
7 out of 10
P.S. I lacked a dynamic plot and at least some bright colors in the frame.
One of my omissions about cinema is a gap, not even a gap, but a big gap, or in nautical terms, a huge hole in the ship in relation to Scandinavian cinema. And if a small fraction of Swedish films have been viewed by me, well, a negligible number, then films produced in Denmark and Norway are completely absent, in the list of seen. I decided to start correcting the situation with the film directed by Ole Bornedal “The Story of Someone Else’s Love”. The genre stated in the synopsis said that the picture of a criminal order, and to be exact, the thriller as it is. And the feeling after watching was not just above average, the feeling was such that it was as if he had been born again and had not seen a single film. This is a fantastic feeling, but forgive me for the excessive pathos of film lovers and specialists in the field of cinematography.
I apologize for such a lyrical retreat, just agree that it is not always possible, firstly, to cope with emotions, and secondly, to see what is close to your heart and soul. And the cinema of Bornedal came out to fame, like a ruddy pie from a real housewife. Why the pie? Because the pastries seemed home-made, not shop-based. Cinema tragicomic in the debut, Mittelspiel took a somewhat different, I would say a severe criminal turn, which without false modesty increased interest and attention to the picture.
So there was Jonas. And Jonas had a family, represented by his wife and two children. He worked as a photographer in the police. It would be time to finish the story. How many Jonas in Denmark work as law enforcement photographers? However, the story has swirled since the moment when the family loaded into the car and went for a ride. Jonas's thruntlet isn't very brisk, as his girl will tell us, calling Dad's car a damn car, an old pram. Yes, as we can see, children in Denmark are not much different from ours. So, their car stood on the highway like a leaf in front of the grass. A parallel course, cracking on the cell phone was going Julia. She wasn't driving, she was driving like she was hiding from a chase. And no wonder that her iron horse stumbled, performing a flip-mortal. Yulcha is in the hospital, and Jonas is near Yulchi surrounded by relatives and friends, as the hero of Peter Shcherbakov from the film Garage would say. No one has ever seen the bridegroom of Julian, but they have heard that the latter is called Sebastian. Occasion fell to Jonas, as it could be. And the merry-go-round was so twisted that you wouldn't think of it on purpose. And laughter and tears and love. Maybe not love. Maybe the yellow water hit the head, as the heroine of Nina Doroshina from the ever-memorable film Love and Pigeons would say? Don't know. But Jonas is not himself. Not rosy, not alive. Rudy only in the arms of Yulinskaya, and with a living wife not alive. These are the cakes.
Oh, and a great movie. Awesome, wind-swept chius. Over such films, you think for a long time, being in a state of bliss and euphoria from what you see. One conclusion: this movie is one of the brightest representatives of Scandinavian cinema, which certainly will not dust on the shelves. I don’t know if the tape of Bornedal will enter the annals of this art, but in the list of my favorite paintings it fell like chickens in a pinch. And it looks like it'll be a long time. Of course, ten points!
This movie plowed me over. In an hour and a half of screen time, I lived a lifetime. I laughed and cried, experienced longing and despair, a wave of light sadness and unrequited love came over me, thanks to Bornedal.
Nikolai Li Kaas spends five minutes on the screen in total, but what an infernal, powerful image he created during this time, a real clot of nothingness, cruel, dangerous - played simply colossal. Vertelsen in his usual role as a nerd, unexpectedly catching ass not intended for him bullets. Brilliant Rebecca Hemse - amnesia in her performance is very realistic, the hardest role and she coped with "excellent". And of course, now brilliant in the role of Cardinal Della Rovere in the European version of “Borgia” Dejan Chukic, as a cynical friend of the main character.
As I understand Jonas, there are times when you want to run away from everyday, petty shit, and I want to believe that everything is still ahead, this is only the beginning, you can still correct, rewrite white. Jonas got this chance, and he took it, paying for the sins of others, but it was worth it!
A non-trivial plot, a well-created gloomy atmosphere, nature foreshadowing danger by its one kind. And how it is all filmed, modest means, but stylish and the result is simply amazing. Bornedal is brilliant. Add an allusion to the biblical parable about Jonah (Jonas) in the womb of a whale.
The key is the scene in the morgue, after a long conversation between Jonas and Frank, the latter asks the pathologist to show where love is, and he tastefully shows the centers responsible for attraction, passion, love on the newly extracted brain. It's very simple, gentlemen, our feelings can only be described in medical terms. All our “complex” experiences can be reduced to a chain of reactions in the brain cells. Physiology-s.
Special thanks for the ending, I always imagined the perfect happy ending.
10 out of 10
My program ends with a thriller by Danish director Uwe Bornedal. At the SFF, he had previously appeared in the Swedish program with the film I Am Dina. And if there he rushed between different genres, then here he was faithful to the chosen direction from beginning to end. I chose the film because of an interesting description. He also participated in the Sundance World Program. However, the Grand Prix was still the Swedes.
The film begins with a classic reception in thrillers. We are shown three short scenes about love. And then we'll slowly put together a mosaic of events. I love stories that touch on the subject of substitution. Sometimes you want to be in someone else’s shoes. Here, Jonas, a witness to a car accident, comes to the hospital to deal with the health of the injured girl. That's why he's called her fiancé. And then it went too fast. The family mistook him for the real Sebastian, the doctor gives instructions on caring for the patient and even Julia asks to tell about how they met, because she lost her memory. Anyway, no one noticed the trick. But what happened to the real Sebastian?
The story is really interesting and instructive. Never pretend to be someone you are not. At best, you'll sit in a puddle because you'll be caught cheating. But it wasn't the best case. Everything was much more serious for the main character. He's just tired of the routine. So I got into this adventure. But most intrigued by the mystery of Julia. That line definitely succeeded. I watched with interest the passages of her memories. Although Sebastian's line seems too far-fetched and unrealistic. But I liked the ending. It would be hard to think of another ending. And why? It was called a cargoeme - get in the back.
I liked the direction. The most spectacular scene is the moment of the accident and the slow motion in the cabin of the car. Bornedal does not avoid explicit scenes. So there will be nudity and meat. In general, it turned out a classic thriller or an unusual story of someone else’s love. It depends on which side to look at the film. I loved it.