Another Danish Movie...

"RECONSTRUCTION", is a Danish film that came out in 2004, and that I recently rented. I've yet to meet a Danish film that I don't love. This is a movie that plays with "reality", but certainly, an exploration of love. Before the action starts the music played is, "Night and Day", Fred Astaire's version. I'm hooked already. Also there is lots of atmosphere created by people intensely smoking. It's possible that the world got hooked on smoking because of sexy movies. The photography throughout is compelling, a real feast for the eyes, as they say.
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A man, Alex, a photographer, (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, quickly becoming my favorite actor), sees a woman on a subway. He decides to change his life, by leaving his present girlfriend, Simone, and pursuing under extremely cinematic conditions, the woman, Aimee. The same actress, Maria Bonnevie, ravishing and true, plays both roles. Aha. Aimee's husband, a writer who narrates the film, is seen to be actually writing the story of the other characters. Do the characters exist? Are we seeing his imagination at work? I'm reminded of John Fowles' , " The French Lieutenant's Woman", in which there is a movie being filmed within the movie, and the actors playing the roles just keep overlapping. He dares us to care, keeps telling us he's creating fiction. And we wind up caring. The actors in front of my eyes are so real..I'm falling in love. How come?
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This is the first film by the Danish director, Christoffer Boe, who brings a startling control over this very enigmatic story set in Copenhagen. The story keeps shifting, and one tries to dig into a reality, to find the heart of the movie.
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"Reconstruction", is most definitely a love story that keeps pulling the rug out from under us, and the characters. And having Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings", as a theme, worked very well to take me along into this wonderfully elusive film. This movie definitely is a shape shifter, not to be missed.