Who let the Dogme out? Following in the wake of Denmark's homegrown film movement (which prized hand-held cameras, shock tactics, and non-generic cinema above all else), this sparky little drama stars actress Paprika Steen (a familiar face from The Idiots and Open Hearts), in a bittersweet tale of terminal illnesses, adultery, and family troubles.
Poaching lots of its themes and energy from films like Open Hearts or Italian For Beginners, this may look and sound like a Dogme movie. But it doesn't subscribe to the austere tenets of that cult movement.
"FANTASTIC PERFORMANCE"
Eschewing the rough and ready edge and occasionally pretentious haughtiness of the Dogme movement, Okay is instead an attempt to learn from the example that Lars von Trier and company taught the world: great films can be made out of the everyday realities of life, love, and family ties.
Centred on a fantastic performance from Steen (her first leading role), Jesper W Nielsen's film dissects the mid-life malaise of relationship compromises with a canny knack for making an original story seem sprightly and fresh.
Steen plays Nete, a late thirtysomething wife and mother, whose cranky old father (Ole Ernst) has only a few weeks to live. She arranges for him to move in with her and university lecturer husband Kristian (Troels Lyby, another Dogme player) and their teenage daughter (Molly Blixt Egelind).
"BITTERSWEET STORYLINE"
A month passes, he's still alive and the family is slowly falling apart. As the characters struggle to put their feelings into words, it's obvious that everything - and nothing - is OK.
The bittersweet storyline may tug somewhat too insistently on our heartstrings, yet that's not enough to distract from the detail with which each character is drawn. Like the Danish directors he obviously admires, Nielsen realises that family dramas can make for engrossing cinema when the intensity of the relationships between sensitively played characters is allowed to flourish.
In Danish with English subtitles
Okay (2003)
