Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Contains spoilers Written by National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield graduate Ingeborg Tops ø e and directed by Jeanette N ø rdahl, Wildland (original title K ø d & Blod , meaning ‘Flesh and Blood’) is a gripping rural Danish drama about the corrupting ties of family. When her mother dies in a car crash, seventeen-year-old Ida (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) is taken in by her aunt, Bodil (Sidse Babett Knudsen). Bodil lives with two out of three of her adult sons, Jonas (Joachim Fjeldstrup) and Mads (Besir Zeciri) as well as Jonas’ wife, Marie (Sofie Torp) and Jonas and Marie’s baby daughter. She runs a bar, nice enough but hardly heaving with customers. She also lends money. In her house, the children are expected to collect, though Jonas prefers to sit in the car. When David (Elliott Crosset), the less than prodigal son, who has had a drug problem in the past, returns home with his sometime girlfriend, Anna (Carla Philip R ø der), the debt collection business, which is ...

Pictured : Ms Novak ( Mia Wasikowska ) sashays through the Talent Academy in a scene from the comedy-drama, ' Club Zero ', directed by Jessica Hausner from a screenplay by Hausner and  Géraldine Bajard . Still courtesy of Coproduction Office / BAC Films There is a case to be made that Austrian-born Jessica Hausner is one of the best writer-directors working in cinema today. Certainly she is the equal of her much-fêted compatriot Michael Haneke. Hausner’s films are about transgressors and ideas who are portrayed through a neutral lens. Her films aren’t about sex. Rather they are preoccupied with liberal guilt. We should do more for each other and ourselves or else we are doomed. Her message might be shortened to, ‘we are doomed’. Club Zero , which premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and has been released worldwide incrementally with little fanfare and certainly no awards heat, concerns itself with the politics of over-consumption. Hausner doesn’t fat shame. Rather she...