European Films

While the discussion about Venice Golden Lion winner Brokeback Mountain rages on as the film reaches Europeans and small-town Americans, here at the Berlinale another look at the difficulty of defining and understanding love between two people premiered: the Danish drama En soap (A Soap). Unlikely to be nominated for any Oscars soon (it is not only a small, grainily filmed and intimate drama, it is above all Danish), the debut feature of Pernille Fischer Christensen explores the relationship between a Veronica (David Dencik), a transsexual waiting for a sex-change operation and her new downstairs neighbour Charlotte (Trine Dyrholm), who has just left her boyfriend of several years (Frank Thiel).

Though the characters and the dialogues are real enough, several contrivances make the story feel a bit too mechanical, including the women’s insistence to have to repay for every single thing they do for another as well as the reliance on the dues ex machina that is the fact that the two ladies both get drunk easily, which is the pretext used for letting them explore the physical attraction that they might feel for one another.

David Dencik (Babylonsjukan, Reconstruction) is perhaps not the most logical choice to play a transsexual, though he pulls it off admirably. Trine Dyrholm (Festen/The Celebration) is excellent as the woman-next-door who speaks before thinking and is as undecided about her move out with her ex as she is about her feelings for Veronica. En soap thus never becomes too soapy (the title refers to Veronica’s addiction to an American soap opera that Christensen wisely never shows on screen), though the film does remain a bit predictable at times, despite its rarely seen subject matter. On a lighter note, after having seen festival opener Snowcake and now En soap, there is one trend in the Official Competition entries that is already earmarked: making dogs eat bananas and pizzas and hoping the audience will find it funny. No such luck so far.