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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
KIRA'S REASON: A LOVE STORY
One difference between schmaltzy Hollywood fare, with its montages to
songs
like "So Happy Together" (spoofed so well in Adaptation) and a
Dogme
95 film is that when a woman breaks out dancing alone to music in her
living
room, she's not just happy but disturbed. Made under guidelines of the
Danish film collective (the strict use of natural light and sound,
hand-held
camera, and non-genre storytelling, etc.), this domestic drama (so much
for
the genre ban) begins when Kira (Stine Stengade, a brunette Helena
Christiansen) returns home from a psychiatric clinic to her two young
sons
and husband Mad (Lars Mikkelsen). It soon becomes apparent that she
hasn't
recovered. Mad finds her huddled to the ground crying after she has
fled a party in her honor. Like the heroine of Breaking the
Waves, Kira's
an
outsider, a child trapped in an adult body, not knowing restraint. And
as
in
The Idiots, the public swimming pool is the site of
inappropriate
behavior.
Kira's over-enthusiastic splashing scares away other children. She
refuses
to leave, struggling with and hitting a lifeguard. As her actions
become
more impulsive and her marriage unravels, the film is engagingly
unpredictable. That is until the last 15 minutes with its pat
explanation
revealing her breakdown's source and the unconvincing happy ending.
With
the
camera literally in the actors' faces, Mikkelsen's understated
performance
is a welcome counterbalance to Stengade's fireworks. Only occasionally,
such
as in the dance solo, is her acting self-conscious. Refreshingly, the
editing is much smoother, even more conventional, than other Dogme
films.
Though not as engaging as Italian for Beginners or as riveting
as The
Celebration, Kira's strength is its uncompromising portrayal
of the
frustrations of a relationship affected by mental illness. KT
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