Villa Paranoia

Villa Paranoia is a film that sprawls a little in every direction without really knowing whether it wants to be a comedy, a social-realist drama or something else entirely. As usual, Erik Clausen has a lot on his mind, but in the confusion it never becomes quite clear what the main message is. Either way, you are well entertained from start to finish.

Best of all is the main story about Anna, a woman in her twenties who, recognising her lack of success as an actress, reluctantly takes a job as a carer for an elderly man, Walentin, who appears to be completely helpless and unable to communicate with the outside world at all.

Walentin's middle-aged son, the lonely chicken farmer Jørgen, does not exactly harbour warm feelings for his father, so nobody really takes any interest in the old man until Anna enters the picture. She soon sees evidence that Walentin is far from the vegetable he pretends to be. She senses that his past conceals traumas and secrets. So she goes digging in the past in order somehow to free Walentin from his inner torment. Anna gets help from the petty criminal but basically decent Kenneth, nicely played by debutant Søren W. Bendtsen, a former Big Brother star, no less.

In a subplot the chicken farmer desperately tries to find himself a wife, as he is withering away from loneliness. An unpleasant rape scene and a rather unresolved ending jar more than a little in the middle of an otherwise predominantly cheerful film.