Forever and ever
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Forever and ever |
| Original title | Elsker dig for Evigt |
| Country of production | Denmark |
| original language | Danish |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Susanne beer |
| script | Thomas Jensen is different |
| production | Sisse Graum Jørgensen , Peter Aalbæk Jensen, Vibeke Windelov, Karen Bentzon |
| music | Jesper Winge Leisner |
| camera | Morten Søborg |
| cut | Thomas Krag, Pernille Bech Christensen |
| occupation | |
| |
Forever and Eternal (English title: Open Hearts ) is a feature film by the director Susanne Bier , shot in 2002 in Denmark . He follows the rules of the Dogma 95 manifesto.
action
Copenhagen. The 23-year-old cook Cecilie (Sonja Richter) and the geography student Joachim (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) are planning to get married. Before that he would like to go on a mountain tour in Patagonia and reassures Cecilie that it is no more dangerous there than in her kitchen.
They go to town together. Joachim gets out and says goodbye to Cecilie. Then Joachim opens the door to kiss her goodbye. As he steps back into the street, he is hit by another car.
Marie (Paprika Steen) who caused the accident had just got into an argument with her daughter Stine (Stine Bjerregaard); the girl had asked her to drive faster. Marie does not see the accident, but hears the impact.
Cecilie waits in the hospital while Joachim is operated on for hours. In a state of shock, Marie is admitted to the same hospital and tells her husband Niels (Mads Mikkelsen), who works there as a doctor, what has happened and asks him to look after the injured man's girlfriend.
He finds Cecilie in the waiting room. He introduces himself and gives her his home number card in case she needs help.
As a result of the accident, Joachim is paralyzed from the neck down. In his helplessness, he feels humiliated by Cecilie's visits and sympathy and reacts aggressively. He fends them off and doesn't want to see them anymore. Cecilie does not give up and visits him despite the prohibition, lies down next to him crying and tries to put his limp arms around her. The nurses alert a doctor who finally shows Cecilie out.
Confused by the behavior of her fiancé, Cecilie confides in Niels more and more often. A love relationship gradually develops from the medical care. Niels, who until then was happily married to Marie (together they have a daughter and two sons), gets into a conflict of conscience. Nevertheless, he secretly meets with Cecilie in her apartment and even pays the new costs for a sofa, two lamps and a double bed.
The receipts for the furniture are found by his watchful daughter Stine. She waits for him in front of the apartment building specified in the delivery address and confronts the father. While Marie is worried about Stine, she rings Cecilie's doorbell and urges her to leave her father alone. Cecilie seeks a conversation with Stine. The girl blames herself for asking her mother to drive faster. Shortly afterwards, when Marie receives a call from Cecilie and learns that her daughter is with her, she is surprised and asks her husband what that means. Then she understands, and Niels does not deny that he has had an affair. Marie slaps him in the face and goes to Cecilie to pick up Stine. Shortly after they both return, Marie Niels asks for forgiveness. But he leaves the family and moves in with his lover.
While Niels and Cecilie are in each other's arms, a nurse calls: Joachim has changed his mind and would now like to see his girlfriend. Immediately she gets up, gets dressed and rushes to the hospital. Now she sits by his bed again for days.
Niels stays with a colleague. When he tried to calm him down by assuring that Marie would definitely take him back after a while, he replied bitterly: "You don't even know if I want to win Marie back."
When Joachim notices that Cecilie is thinking elsewhere, he makes it clear to her that marriage is no longer an option. He releases her and just asks her to visit him every now and then for a while longer.
Reviews
“At the Hofer Filmtage 2002,“ Open Hearts ”was one of the bright spots (...), and if you ask yourself how it came about that this film made the collected production revenue from a German half-year in Germany look old, you actually hit one of the roots the German misery. Because what Susanne Bier's imagery opposes most decisively is precisely that commonplace aesthetic of prime-time television films that has been prevalent in our cinema for a long time. The "Dogma" manifesto wiped their standards aside with the stroke of a pen, but it is films like "Open Hearts" ... that artistically redeem the bold claim. "
“With a pronounced sense of atmosphere and the subtle comedy behind the tragedy, the director leads through a rollercoaster of emotions. Actors like Mads Mikkelsen ("Flickering Lights", NFL 2001), Paprika Steen ("Das Fest", NFL 1998) and Nikolaj Lie Kaas ("Truly Human", NFL 2001) were seldom as convincing as in "Open Hearts" currently breaking all box office records in Denmark. "
"The dogma-experienced team around director Susanne Bier manages the feat of developing positive perspectives from seemingly hopeless emotional situations with humor and optimism."
“Plenty of handkerchief cinema, but despite all the proximity to the documentation, there is something strangely constructed about it. At the beginning and the end, Ms. Bier defies dogma by alienating colors and using music. You could actually do without the shaky pictures "
“OPEN HEARTS is also a film that was made according to the rules of Lars von Trier's 1995 Dogma Manifesto…. With conventional means, OPEN HEARTS would have become an unconventional, exciting, and in many ways above-average film, which one would wish for a large audience. Because it is the close look at the apparently familiar and the banal, the eye for the drama of the everyday, not the wobbly camera, that this humane film about the implosion of an outwardly happy family, about the no longer functioning of the usual everyday life in his homeland one of the most successful of all time. Because it has substance, OPEN HEARTS has become a work of art that many can identify with. What better could be said about a film? "
“The story thrives on its strong characters and is cleverly balanced. Susanne Bier can rely on an ensemble of actors that acts excellently right down to the supporting roles and gives the problem a great deal of credibility. The film, which has already won awards at several festivals (Nordic Film Days in Lübeck, Toronto, San Sebastian), is Denmark's Oscar candidate for best foreign language film. In the original it is called "Elsker dig for evigt" - I love you forever. With this beautiful and idealistic title, he is even closer to the subject of the fragility of happiness. In this film, it seems that eternity and happiness just don't go together. "
“In the end everyone is a fool, somehow betrayed by others, by themselves - by life. The attempt to establish order in it fails. Susanne Bier tells this story as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It probably is, and sometimes it takes a film like this to remind us of it. "
Web links
- Forever and ever in the Internet Movie Database (English)