REVIEWED - RECONSTRUCTION: There are certain pieces of music - Orff's Carmina Burana, Elgar's Nimrod, anything by Wagner - which, with their swelling, bullying insistence, tend to arouse suspicion in the mind of the cautious film-goer. Blasting such popular classics at audiences to artificially ratchet up the emotional temperature is a rather crude con-trick, and folk will eventually figure out that they are being had, Donald Clarke.
Adagio for Strings - as used by that archetypal cinematic flim-flam man Oliver Stone throughout Platoon - is all over this often-intriguing Danish puzzle picture. In combination with the cool performances and rich, oily cinematography, the music creates quite an overpowering effect. But these superficial pleasures do little to distract from the Reconstruction's relentless, grandstanding obscurity.
While travelling on the undergound with his girlfriend Simone (Marie Bonnevie), the square-jawed Alex (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) notices the beautiful Aimee (Bonnevie again) and, making feeble excuses to his partner, follows the stranger into the city. After a night's passion, he returns home to discover that his apartment has vanished into thin air and that nobody recognises him.
It's like Kafka, the production notes claim. It's actually rather more like It's a Wonderful Life, though that may be too mainstream an influence for these hoity-toity film-makers to acknowledge. The surreal mystery is quite gripping and the tense atmosphere well achieved, but the notion that the film's plot may be the work of Aimee's novelist husband is too stupid-stupid even to be clever-clever.
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