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T O P I C R E V I E W
BaftaBaby
Posted - 01/09/2013 : 23:54:42 Of course you will recall Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. But this versatile Danish heart-throb has more than that to Bond him to Euro-stardom. This year he won Best Actor at Cannes for his performance as Lucas in Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt.
The film's been heralded as Dogme dude Vinterberg's best since Festen. And no Dogme's were harmed in the making of this film.
Children accusing adults of taboo interference has formed the basis - overt and whispering off-screen - for a handful of movies over the decades. Particularly potent was Nicole Kassell's The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon as a convicted paedophile genuinely trying to be rehabilitated back into the community.
The Hunt takes a different direction; it's to Vinterberg's credit that not only is there no simplistic scenario, but we the viewers are continually having to question our own perspective on this troubling question.
He does that by presenting some perfectly reasonable scenes of a man interacting with a four year old girl. The man is the best friend of her dad; they grew up together. She knows him, his teen-aged son - who lives with his mom since the divorce, and the family spaniel Fanny.
He also works part-time at the local nursery school she attends.
She probably has a bit of an infant crush on him. He's really great with the kids and her parents tend to argue a lot. Her teen-aged brother, like the majority of boys his age, is exploring the boundaries of sexual possibilities. Mostly through accessing internet porn.
The setting is not a sophisticated big city; it's a bit of a back-water.
When the kid states quite matter-of-factly something which we're reluctant to believe about this great guy - well, that sets off a tizzy that develops into a huddle-and-a-muddle which lands in a conclusion jumper that becomes the film itself.
Did he? Didn't he? He couldn't have. How could he! Yes. No. Yes. No. Suddenly his calm demeanour - previously so reassuring - acquires an ambivalence.
Will we remain his friend or have we joined the mob literally baying for blood.
There are some logistic flaws in the telling. Even though it's an out of the way place, it's hard to believe that, in this era, only one or two die-hard friends would come to his defence. Or at least question what might be true.
And some key characters who start its narrative just vanish along the way.
But it's a strong film, and Vinterberg steers it masterfully to its unpredictable conclusion.
