Here, Danish director Susanne Bier turns out another Dogme-inflected ensemble piece on the vagaries of the human heart. Mads Mikkelsen is affectingly vulnerable as a former wastrel who seems to have found a redemptive mission as he returns to Denmark from Mumbai to seek funds for an orphanage, only to find that fate has other plans in store for his emotional centre.What follows is a sensitive exploration of imperfect people and their conflicting passions. Its fairly standard plot - a father meeting the daughter he never knew he had - is rescued from mediocrity by the performances of Mikkelsen and Rolf Lassgård as his millionaire financier with ulterior motives, and Bier's direction, which, although curiously fond of milking close-ups of people's eyes for all the deeper truth that might be wrung out of them, succeeds in conveying how people really behave when pushed into a corner.
The only real bum note is the sloppily tacked-on (pre-Slumdog) cutesy waifs-in-India subplot, which casts a lingering doubt as to whether Bier was looking for a breakthrough into the realm of the Hollywood zloty along with the Oscar nomination. It worked, anyway - she was directing Halle Berry by the following year.
7/10
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