A Second Chance

A Second Chance (15)

Denmark 2014  102 mins  Dir: Susanne Bier  Starring: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Maria Bonnevie, May Andersen

Danish Dogme alumni Susanne Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen’s previous collaborations, from Open Hearts to the Oscar-winning In a Better World, have tended to trade in the kind of plot contrivance and shallow emotional manipulation that we associate more closely with Hollywood. Little wonder the remake vultures start to circle whenever they unleash a new overcooked offering. The formula remains unchanged here, though once again Bier employs a superlative cast to distract our attention from her film’s dafter twists.

The set-up revives the intertwining narrative device of In a Better World to promise one of those great hand-wringing liberal moral dilemmas. On the one hand, there’s dedicated middle-class cop Andreas (Coster-Waldau – better known to millions as Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones) who lives in what appears to be some kind of perfect, classy architect’s show home with his lovely wife Anne (Bonnevie) and their baby son Alexander. Damn, those Danish coppers must be paid well. Then there’s scrofulous junkie scumbag ex-con Tristan (Kaas), who beats and abuses his partner, Sanne (Andersen), in the couple’s squalid, filthy apartment. They too have a son, Sofus, who’s generally left to marinate in his own urine and faeces. These very different worlds collide when Andreas and his partner Simon (Thomsen) bust Tristan and are appalled to find Sofus shut in a closet. Andreas is particularly affected by this discovery because the boy is the same age as his own son, so he lobbies social services to have him taken into care. But they’re powerless to act, since the child is not malnourished and there’s no evidence that his mother is a heroin user.

So far, so social realist drama about when it’s appropriate to remove children from parents for their own protection. But then Bier and Jensen introduce the first of many twists, which are apparently intended to challenge our assumptions about right and wrong, as well as stereotypes of good and bad parents. It’s best not to discuss these here, suffice it to say that as soon as you’ve got your head round the first “Ewww . . . he’s not really going to do that, is he?” one, they continue to flow thick and fast. The trouble is that while this descent into melodrama is not unenjoyable in a trashy kind of way, it does become increasingly preposterous to the point of provoking an inappropriate chuckle or two. The cast, bless ’em, give it their best shots – even Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who’s lumbered with the most two-dimensional role. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is particularly impressive as the tortured Andreas. Alas, May Andersen never really succeeds in looking like anything other than what she is: an Elite fashion model scumming down with some filth and grime slapped on instead of make-up.