Manal S. I have seen so many Dogme films but I can wholeheartedly say that Open Hearts "Elsker dig for evigt" (2002) is my favorite and the closest to my heart.Cecilie (Sonja Ritcher) is a cook in her early twenties who is deeply in love with and also recently engaged to Joachim (Nikolaj Lie Kaas). Their relationship is put to test when Joachim becomes paralyzed for life after a car accident. The woman who was driving the car (Paprika Steen) feels obliged to help the couple and pushes her husband Niels (Mads Mikkelsen) to comfort Cecilie, unaware of the devastating outcome.. Niels falls in love with Cecilie.The thing about Dogme films is that they are capable of putting you in a very close position to the characters, almost in a crude way. Susanne Bier uses this honesty to gently place us inside the most closed space: the human psyche. Open Hearts does not just slam you with naked reality and intimate details - it does not want to shock you like most Dogme films, it takes you gently by the hand and allows you the same amount of confusion and indeterminateness the characters are feeling. And it does that equally; you can never blame any of the four protagonists even in their lowest moments because it is raw human emotions they are showing and simultaneously you are experiencing.The film could leave you melancholic or hopeful, it depends on how you see it, but what I am well sure of is that it will give you no closure, no answers, no relief of any kind - and this is so heartbreaking, just like life itself. It puts you in direct contact with the awful/beautiful fact that despite its intensity and realness sometimes, all the spectrum of human emotions is transient. My eyes teared up at the end of the film, not because I felt sorry for anyone or anything, but because I felt betrayed by the film's stark honesty. I wanted an ending to this emotional mess I have witnessed/experienced and instead I was left clueless and disillusioned in the middle of nowhere.Okay, enough with this subjective philosophical rambling. Let's talk about some technical aspects.Although Bier breaks away with some of the Dogme rules, I thought the use of Super-8 camera to show short fantasy sequences is a brilliant touch to take you a few steps away from reality and bring you even closer to the characters. Anders Thomas Jensen's script is gripping and flows effortlessly even when characters do not say a word, which leads us to the carefully chosen and amazing cast. I personally think that a great deal of the genius of the performance in this film comes from Bier herself and the kind of free yet intimate atmosphere she has provided for her actors. She does not aim at getting the best angles or making them look attractive, she only allows them the freedom to be themselves no matter how that would look like.

lasttimeisaw Dogme movement (1995-2005) is a terra incognita for me, although now it has officially existed only as a terminology thanks to the ubiquitous evasion of shooting on location with any cellphones or other hand-held lighter gizmos, and its spirit has been ingested by more advanced mutants (e.g. mumblecore). But Susanne Bier is not merely a Dogme enthusiast, AFTER THE WEDDING (2006 7/10) is a redoubtable relationship dissection and OPEN HEARTS (the new Hannibal Mads Mikkelsen star in both films) treads the same territory to examine the complexity of humans' conundrum between desire and responsibility, ethics and emotions. Two couples, one is engaged, another has 3 children, a car accident (not entirely abides by the Dogme rules though) turns their worlds upside down, a threat is common-or-garden both in the cinematic and real world; the life-changing mishap prompts an adultery between a middle class doctor and the disheartened fiancée, whose fiancé undergoes a permanent quadriplegia from the car accident where the doctor's wife is the offender. The face-fixated close-ups extensively put those characters under scrutiny for their rational and irrational behaviors, natural light commingles with saturated palette (during the beginning and the ending) and a black & white lens of the blurry and grainy illusory fancy. The cast is sterling, a quartet of tug-of-war from Mikkelsen, Richter, Lie Kass and Steen, a humdrum-weary family man holds his seven-year-itch infatuation to a damsel-in-distress; a comfort-seeker with abiding guilt of abandoning her bed-ridden fiancé; a young paralyzer who ruthlessly deserts his fiancée for his incompetence as a proper man but still hankers for her company; a wife is rueful of her road rage and its tragic repercussions, suddenly devastated by her husband's utter betrayal; Steen's impromptu slapping and Mikkelsen's reaction are among the best on-screen intensified scenes I have even seen, three of the four leads end up in my yearly top 10 list (guess who narrowly missed the spot?). But on the other hand, the melodramatic core of the story hobbles a soul-searching catharsis and empathetic introspection which would put the film onto an upper notch, Bier and DP Morten Søborg's camera is erratic but not dizzily shaky, the fly-on-the-wall intimacy allows us to take a much closer look at the symptoms and the cause of the frailty resides in every soul on earth, and offers us staying in a paralleled world, munches with palliative pills to ease our own troubles.

Tomas Maly I probably am going the path of the contrarian here, but I really don't understand the high ratings here. I'm all for indie movies on low budgets, but this is just bad. The fuzzy-focus, shaky-camera documentary feel of this movie is totally fine.... But whether it's deliberate or part of the whole Dogme thing, there is absolutely NO editing. There doesn't seem to be any actual script either. It feels like the actors improvised their lines (which is OK) but without much preparation. Dialogue seems forced and unnatural, and you can tell that something is in the dialog because it was a plot point. The video jumps from one thing they say to something else. It was almost like the director was going down a written bullet list of things that need to happen or be said, and was leading them on to improv as they were being videorecorded. "Talk about how your daughter is in trouble", "Ok now cry", "Ok now shout", "Ok now run down the hall", etc... Only bits and pieces to a conversation were recorded, just enough to cover all the plot points, but not enough to seem coherent. The behavior of the actors were not smoothly transitioned from one cut to the next (despite it being only a few seconds/minutes later in 'reality'). It was all dialog without any mood. I don't think this is how people are in real life. It seemed more like 100 cuts of random small little independently acted moments rather than anything coherent. You can tell (whether deliberate or incidental) that the actors weren't paid enough to actually memorize lines (making smooth video scenes possible) and anything more than 15 seconds at a time being recorded.It's just awful. Cuts are not smooth and honestly bothersome. Totally absent of any sort of emotional depth and exploration. The actors weren't allowed to really express much emotionally, it was more about the lines they were saying and the over-the-top reactions that seemed to be about as quality as a first year drama student.The jumping around in dialog make it impossible to actually sympathize or understand any of the reasoning behind what is said. One moment Cecile calls Niels, the next moment he suggest buying furniture for her, then he goes to the supermarket just to have a conversation with her saying how he can't stop thinking about her and thinks he's in love with her. Absolutely zero emotional exploration or transition justifying how he feels. It's out of the blue. Later you see the two seemingly in love, in the middle of having sex, and then the hospital nurse calls to tell Cecile that Joachim finally wants to see her. She of course jumps to the occasion and the literal next scene is Niels in his coworker Finn's basement, implying that he must have moved out of Cecile's place - but without bothering to explain it all. Not even a conversation "oh Niels I'm sorry but I love Joachim and want to be with him".About the best part of the movie was the acting by the supporting people - the daughter, Joachim, the wife, etc. They were more real-life believable. The main actors were just a joke, though.Beyond all that, there was obviously no budget for a costume designer or scene designer. I couldn't decide whether Niels was a doctor or a nurse, with that plain all-white outfit that was clearly purchased at a department store. For all the time he was at the hospital, none of it actually was of him remotely doing a second of his actual work. So I could never figure out what he did there at the hospital. And just because he has an oversized cell phone from 1995 doesn't mean that somehow raises his status to some sort of doctor. He "must" be important with a giant phone! There was nothing 'real life' about moments that showed no actual every day actions (outside of the 'script') of people.The dialog where it is first brought up that Joachim will be forever paralyzed is so made up that there's no sliver of authenticity. Not one line suggests anyone did any research as to medical conditions or even to what might a doctor say. Not one doctor actually said a single medical term or medical condition, no medical explanation as to what happened with Joachim physiologically. Not even something as simple as "his spine was crushed". With the car driving no more than 25mph, how he became paraplegic is beyond me. Not a single bit of dialog justifying his medical condition. Usually a doctor would at least start going into medical details once a family member starts asking about any hope/treatment. Awful.I suppose there is some supposed "real life" feel, but it really seems poor quality. Blair Witch seemed much better. It's fine the car accident scene seemed totally fake, but it really is sub-par for all the actors involved. Low budget doesn't need to be void of intelligent/in-depth dialog, a thought out script, emotional expression, or reasonable editing. With the splices of so many small clips there is really no emotional or psychological exploration of the characters, or transition from one major set of circumstances (the two hanging out) to another (the two living together).This is most definitely NOT Suzanne Bier's "best" as others suggest. All her other movies were light years better. I feel that Mads Mikkelsen's talent was wasted on this film here. Pretty much any other movie of his was far superior, and many of them were also low budget. With Lars Von Trier as the brainchild behind the Dogme rules, I can understand why this movie here is just awful. There isn't a movie of his I can stand. I otherwise really like Scandinavian films.

WilliamCKH I recently purchased OPEN HEARTS, having enjoyed immensely Susanne Bier's AFTER THE WEDDING. I realized it was a dogme film and was looking forward to seeing the great MADS MIKKELSEN in digital format. Watching the story unfold was both harrowing and exhilarating. The emotional roller coaster Bier takes you through in this film touches on so many corners of human emotion that I'm left really in admiration of how well she understands human nature. And I also must not forget writer Anders Thomas Jensen, who as a writer, can go to so many places ..not only in human dramas such as this and AFTER THE WEDDING, but vicious, wicked comedies like FLICKERING LIGHTS, and ADAM'S APPLES (both also with MADS MIKKELSEN) The writing was superb, the acting from all parties exceptional. I must say the two characters that really left an impression were Nikolaj Lie Kaas' Joachim, who is so vile during the middle portion of the film, but sympathetic at the same time, and he earned that moment of grace at the end....and also Paprika Steen's Marie, who has a tough role straddling her anger and her need for forgivness from Cecilia. In a scene where you expect Marie will curse Cecilia out, she speaks softly and tells Cecilia she understands. She is also walking this same line with her husband Niels. In a scene where she yells at Niels to get out of the house...She yells the same lines Joachim yells to Cecilia at the hospital, telling her to stay away.....neither character means what they say. It's very interesting that these two scenes would marry each other. I was really impressed with the emotional complexity of all the characters and the hints the director gives us as to a possible outcome....which if life goes accordingly...chance might also undo.