Smilla's Sense of Snow

Bille August took a beating from almost every critic for his adaptation of Peter Høgh's national treasure before the film's Danish premiere. Weekendavisen's Bo Green Jensen was among the few who waited until the Danish premiere to review the film, as the film company had indeed requested. At the same time, he is also one of the few critics who have tried to be fair in their review. It was abundantly clear that nearly all the critics had read or reread the novel just before seeing the film, and with considerable know-it-all superiority they accused Bille August of having left out one thing and botched another.

Bille August has chosen to create a thriller out of the existing source material. If the film works as a thriller, the filmmakers cannot be faulted.

Smilla's Sense of Snow is about the half-Greenlandic Smilla Jaspersen, whose little six-year-old Greenlandic friend in the apartment block, Esajas, dies in mysterious circumstances. The authorities insist that Esajas died in an accident while playing, but Smilla doesn't buy it. Slowly she digs up a quite different truth. It takes her aboard the ship Kronos to Greenland. Both there and in Copenhagen her life is in danger.

The film moves at a relatively calm pace considering that it is a thriller, but the suspense is sustained.

I am not very fond of European co-productions, for national distinctiveness goes a long way towards giving a film its character. At least Bille August has made an effort to make Copenhagen and everyday Danish life recognisable and credible to us Danes, even though it takes some effort to forget Julia Ormond's American background and Harris and Redgrave's English ones. Ormond does, however, work better than expected as the stubborn and resolute heroine Smilla