Brødre (Susanne Bier, 2004)

Brothers, Bier's international breakthrough, serves up the template for all of her later films. A husband-and-wife relationship goes sour in the wake of a traumatic event, guilt is repressed and builds up to an explosive catharsis, and there's a sub-plot centering on a feral Third World region. By the facility of this summary, Bier is a filmmaker of limited palette. Then again, Monet painted Rouen Cathedral more than thirty times.
So, Bier/Dogme stalwart Ulrich Thomsen is the family man who is presumed dead on a military rescue mission in Afghanistan, and the middle of the film has his loafer brother and bereaved wife becoming increasingly close until his eventual return bearing emotional baggage he can't handle, taking out his personal hell on them instead.
It's characteristic of the director's other work in more than just theme: there are moments of stunning imagery as well as scenes which achieve more through understatement than explicit exposition. And once again, the Third World element, this time the brutality of the Afghan captors, is cartoonish in its extremism and wholly pointless. It's a strange brew, and as usual hits more than misses in sum total, but you do wonder why no-one will tell the director what to lose. Maybe next time.
Incidentally, the American remake cast Spider-Man as the shell-shocked father and Queen Amidala as his wife. There, two film reviews for the price of one.

6/10