A man and a woman meet in 1960. They marry because that's what you are supposed to do. But something goes wrong on their wedding night. They have no idea what to do with each other. Sexually. Emotionally. The husband meets a man who knows what to do with his sexuality. Suddenly a hand can do something no hand has done before and lips something no lips have ever done. The two men have a secret love affair. But there is a problem: The woman. And she has something up her sleeve. Will she act? Yes, she will. What happens? Nobody knows. Until now.
Acting
Mikkelsen conveys decades of repression in silent trembling
Cinematography
Aggressive black and white that refuses to let you look away
Direction
Staho packs a feature's worth of trauma into 28 minutes
Director
Simon Staho
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Staho shot this in three days with largely improvised dialogue, which explains the raw, unhinged energy that feels like it might combust.
Made during Denmark's early 2000s queer cinema wave, it deliberately provoked by making the 'tragic' queer narrative absurd and the straight marriage the actual horror.
DK
