Den Skaldede Frisør (Susanne Bier, 2012)

Love is All You Need finds able director Susanne Bier, behind sensitive pieces such as After the Wedding, switching to romcom mode somewhat lackadaisically, relying heavily on the kneejerk charm of both the Bay of Naples and middle-aged women's creased crumpet Pierce Brosnan. He's the widowed dad of a Danish boy about to get married to the daughter of a hairdresser in this photogenic setting, the principal catches being that Brosnan is a hard-nut businessman, his son has cold feet and the hairdresser comes recovering from cancer and with a cheating husband to boot. Of course, they are destined to fall in love.
There are a fair few quite deft and fresh scenes in the build-up to the climax, with people's responses to potential crises diverging from the norm, but then it all gets out of hand in a manner akin to the director banging together all the figures in every permutation possible, like a child who's been playing with her dolls too long. This results in some utterly cringeworthy hand-wringing dialogue, particularly between Brosnan and son. It's a shame as some disciplined script editing could have salvaged the grain from the chaff. Perhaps Bier needed to get back to the basics and for her that seems to have meant getting back to grittier fare, as evidenced after several years of further strayings by her assured control over the BBC series The Night Manager.

4/10