Mifune

The third Dogma release is at heart a very conventional romantic comedy, gussied up with 'provocative' anti-bourgeois elements carried over from The Idiots and Festen, and shot, as it were, in denial of any production restraints. Kresten (Berthelsen) hasn't told his new wife - the boss's daughter - about his moronic brother back home in the sticks. On the other hand he has told her that his father's dead, so it's a little embarrassing when he gets a phone call on their wedding night reiterating the fact and requesting his presence at the funeral. Off he goes, alone, to pick up the pieces on the farm where he grew up, and find some way of taking care of Rud (Asholt) - who has a mental age of eight. A prostitute fleeing a phone sex pest, Liva (Hjejle), answers Kresten's ad for a housekeeper, and shows up with her tearaway brother (Tarding). What follows would scarcely look out of place in a Garry Marshall film: in fact it's no stretch to imagine a Hollywood remake with Richard Gere, Julia Roberts and maybe Giovanni Ribisi as the idiot brother. True, they'd probably end up domesticating Rud (but then so does director Kragh-Jacobsen), cure the careerist Kresten of his misguided social pretensions (so does Kragh-Jacobsen), and neuter Livia's sexual threat (guess what?). Okay, so it's sailing under false colours and trying to have it both ways, but it is perfectly watchable schmaltz with just a soupçon of edge, right? Right! And camera noise!