In a Better World

Directed by Susanne Bier. Starring Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, William Jøhnk Nielsen, Markus Rygaard 113mins, club, IFI, QFT

VETERAN FILM fans know only too well to beware the tagline "Winner of Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards". In recent times, the maddest gong this side of the Golden Globes famously went to The Secret in Their Eyesover A Prophet(!) and The White Ribbon(!!). And who could forget when they plumped for Belle Époqueahead of Farewell My Concubine, The Scent of Green Papayaand The Wedding Banquet?

In this spirit, In a Better World, the latest film from Danish director Susanne Bier, beat the superior Dogtoothand grander Biutifulto take the much-dissed Oscar.

A worthy, decidedly middlebrow drama, it’s precisely the sort of flick the Academy seem to swoon for.

Parallel storylines present Anton, a saintly physician working in an unnamed African refugee camp far away from his estranged wife, Marianne, and delicate, lonely son, Elias.

Happily, the boy, a much-maligned Swede in Denmark, finds a friend in Christian, the troubled, recently orphaned new kid at school.

Unhappily, the pre-teens do not exert a good influence on one another; knives are soon pulled in earnest and favourite anarchist’s recipes are downloaded from the internet. Their respective fathers intervene with pats on the head and reassurances to no avail.

We might be prepared to overlook the tidy, generic structure if any of the adult characters bore even a passing resemblance to real, live people. A heavy-handed subplot detailing the grisly exploits of an African warlord is ill-advised in a film already defined by a lack of credibility and a lot of emotional button pushing.

The children-in-peril, as embodied by the preternatural pairing of Nielsen and Rygaard, keep us hooked dramatically. But the film's pretensions as a grand, global allegory feel slight and undercooked in the wake of the similarly themed Biutifulor Lukas Moodyson's Mammoth. Moodyson kept a tight narrative rein with his thesis about parenting and capitalism; Bier's project is fuzzily intentioned and comes peddling suspiciously happy outcomes.

Like Carlsberg, that other famous Danish export, In a Better Worldis broadly palatable and mass marketable but one can't help but wonder if there aren't tastier Biers out there.