Beautiful women and mystery. Isn’t that how all film noirs begin?” asks someone in Just Another Love Story – but the film isn’t really a film noir (nor, despite its title, is it really a love story). One could describe it as a riff on While You Were Sleeping, the Sandra Bullock rom-com where a lovestruck hero(ine) is mistaken for the girlfriend (now boyfriend) of a comatose man (now woman) by the patient’s family, and forced to go along with the deception – but even that isn’t really accurate, because the tone isn’t that of a rom-com. Instead, director Ole Bornedal – best-known for Nightwatch, both the Danish original and Ewan McGregor-starring remake – gives it a prickly surface with thriller and even horror elements, capped by a coda that works as a bold two fingers in the face of the audience. Mostly the film is a reminder that – along with Lars Von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn (director of the Pusher trilogy) – there seems to be something quite abrasive in current Danish cinema. (This is where I drop my favourite Google-approved factoid, viz. that there’s no word for ‘please’ in the Danish language.)
Our hero is Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen), a crime-scene photographer who’s happily married, though even happiness can sometimes feel like too much of a good thing. (At one point, he and his wife reckon they must’ve made love over 2000 times.) The family car breaks down in the middle of the road, leading to an accident which leaves Julia (Rebecka Hemse) in a coma. Jonas wants to see her – he feels responsible – so he invents a lie about being her boyfriend, and suddenly her rich, loving family think he’s Sebastian, the young man they’ve heard so much about but never met.
Sebastian, it turns out, was a scumbag drug-pusher with violent tendencies, and he’s now dead – or is he? Who’s the frightening figure in a wheelchair – his face completely covered in bandages – who appears at the foot of Julia’s bed? Later, after Jonas and a now-conscious (but amnesiac) Julia have fallen in love, he sees the figure again, watching from a distance in his wheelchair – and runs to apprehend the mystery man, but finds only the abandoned wheelchair. Everything culminates in a three-way showdown, moodily set in a house by the sea with black clouds looming outside.
Not much Sandra Bullock rom-com there, I think you’ll agree – but director Bornedal overplays his hand, making the film appear hollow. Everything’s extreme and in-your-face, from the high-contrast look to nasty gratuitous detail like a man who killed his wife and kids in sadistic ways (one of the crime scenes Jonas has to photograph). Later, when Jonas is caught between two women, Bornedal cross-cuts aggressively – and not really meaningfully – between our hero at Julie’s hospital bed and hosting a dinner p
It’s the kind of flashy hackwork that makes one suspicious – and indeed, Love Story st
Still, there are compensations: style – especially this heavy, oppressive style – creates an intensity that keeps the film watchable, even when it comes off half-baked. At one point there’s ostensible relief, Bornedal pausing the plot so Jonas and his cop friend can talk about Life – but the film simply can’t do intimate, and the camera soon shifts to dramatic high-angle and the cop friend shouting “Have you seen the light?!”. Just Another Love Story is determinedly lurid. Kisses draw blood, comatose women are raped, a nail on a piece of wood is rammed like a spike through a man’s forehead. I repeat: there is no word for ‘please’ in the Danish language.
