PARIS MOVIE REPORT (OCTOBER 2013)


GUSTAV DYEKJAER GIESE IN NORTHWEST

Criminal ambition tears up a family

Danish director Michael Noer's second feature is a hard knocks criminal coming of age involving two brothers​, tall, pale, chiseled nordic types who seem like slightly edgier and less educationally advantaged versions of the great Norwegian director Joachim Trier's star Anders Danielsen Lie. They're like two peas in a pod, but inside maybe there's a key difference. They live with their mom (Lene Marie Christensen) and little sister Freya (Annemieke Bredahl Peppink) in the tough multi-ethnic Copenhagen district designated in the film's title and Casper (Gustav Dyekjaer Giese), 18, steals rich people's high level home electronics (and designer lamps) with a sidekick and sells them off to Jamal (Dulfi Al-Jaburi). Andy (Oscar Dyekjaer Giese, Gustav's actual brother), 17, is interested, and when organized crime moves into Norvest and Casper gains the confidence of midlevel gangster Bjorn (Roland Moller) Casper brings in Andy (desite his promise to mom to protect him) and drops his relationship with Jamal. Jamal will have none of this. Eventually the conflict proves lethal for Casper, who has more of a sense of responsibility than Andy and lacks his daredevil foolishness. Things come to a breaking point when Bjorn assigns Casper the job of offing Jamal, now that the conflict has turned into a turf war.

Energized by the handheld camera of Magnus Nordenhof Jonck of A Hijacking and the commitment and naturalness of newcomers Gustav and Oscar Giese, as well as thei edge created by using a lot of improvisation within scenes, this film achieves a nervous immediacy that can really grab you as things get dicier and dicier for the brothers and the heightened danger tears the whole family apart. The scenes in themselves seem conventional, particularly the coke-and-babes partying of Bjorn et al. and the coming of age rituals. Attention is given to showing how close Casper is to his little sister (a birthday party, a painful goodbye) and to Andy, though a split occurs between the two boys when the younger one turns out to be perhaps the bigger risk-taker. There is a lean muscularity about this film that will endear it to film noir fans even as they may lament the loss of the rituals and elegance of the genre in better days. The way the camera and POV stay nearly always on the shoulders of Casper contributes to unity and realism. There are of course underlying themes of the class and ethnic systems of crime and the devastating effect of crime and financial ambition on the stability of the family.

Noer collaborated with Tobias Lindholm (director of A Hijacking) in 2010 on a claustrophobic prison drama, R. His screenwriting collaborator here was Rasmus Heisterberg, who scripted Royal Affair and the first two films in the Millennium trilogy.

Northwiest/Nordvest, in Danish and English, 91 mins., debuted at Cannes in 2011. It has received good notices in France (Allociné press rating 3.8) following its 9 Oct. 2013 theatrical release. Screened for this review at MK2 Hautefeuille, Odén, Paris.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.