Reconstruction

Reviewed by Lee Shoquist

for Reel Movie Critic

HHH½

Directed by Christoffer Boe. A romantic drama. NR (for sensuality and language. Running time: 90 minutes. In Danish with English sub-titles.

Oh, what a sweet and thoughtful film Reconstruction turns out to be. It tells the wildly elusive tale of a young Danish man who finds his life - love life, actually - inexplicably, illogically re-arranged several times, during the course of a single day, intervened by the hand of fate at the most inopportune moment. The winner of the Best First Feature prize at Cannes 2003, Christoffer Boe's tiny little picture has a huge heart and is absolutely rapturous in its ability to convey a specific mood so elegantly with performance, cinematography and music.

Set in Copenhagen, the film begins as young Alex (handsome and charismatic Nicolaj Lie Kaas) coincidentally meets Aimee (Marie Bonnevie, winning in a dual role) and after an illicit night together, he resolves to risk everything for her. In this case, that means his current girlfriend Simone (also Bonnevie). What he doesn't know is that Aimee is also tied to author and husband August. To didactically drill down the rest of the film's plot, Alex immediately finds his entire world changed - his apartment no longer exists, Aimee doesn't recognize him, and he feels like an alien in his once familiar world. At the same time, August is writing a novel that is narrated on the screen that seems to reflect the event unfolding - but is the novel dictating Alex's life, or merely commenting on it? The meaning is clear; that giving oneself over to love means letting go of identity and all that is known, and submitting to a reconstruction of life as you know it.

Director Boe has a great deal of fun with the audience here, creating a film more about euphoria and confusion than about a linear and chronological story. Danish star Nicolaj Lie Kaas explained to me during a chat that the film is "not so much about plot, and (don't) try to make sense of it." He's right, and I mean that as a high compliment. Reconstruction, above all else, with its woozy, drunken structure and dizzyingly elegant and grainy cinematography, is a tone poem on a high plane, a love letter to the "falling" part of being in love, a glimpse into how absolutely irrational the rush of first love will always be and about as close to that feeling as movies can duplicate.