Reconstruction

Reconstruction is Christoffer Boe's feature debut, but already in the self-assured director's graduation film from the Film School one became acquainted with his boundary-breaking and experimental approach to the medium.

Nikolaj Lie Kaas plays the male lead as Alex, who is going out with Simone but cannot really get the hang of love. After a chance meeting he begins an affair with Aimée, who is married to the somewhat older novelist August Holm. It is hinted that Alex and his problems with love are mere fiction, a writer's attempt to sort out his own marital problems.

The plot of Reconstruction is certainly not easy to keep track of, and that is hardly the intention either. Despite the metafictional elements that constantly point to the film as a construction, especially Maria Bonnevie's double role as Simone and Aimée and a dash of Kafkaesque surrealism, the film nevertheless manages to allow for emotional involvement. That in itself is quite impressive.

On the minus side is the film's tendency to become a little too mannered and a little too clever. What, for example, is the point of the grainy images?