IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE
Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg.
Produced by: Birgitte Hald.
Written by: Thomas Vinterberg & Mogens Rukov.
Director of Photography: Anthony Dod Mantle.
Edited by: Valdís Óskarsdóttir.
Music by: Zbigniew Preisner.
Released by: Strand Releasing.
Language: English.
Country of Origin: USA/Japan/Sweden/UK/Denmark/Germany/Netherlands.
104 min. Rated: R.
With: Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, Sean Penn, Douglas Henshall & Margo Martindale.

For a film with love in the title, Thomas Vinterberg’s follow-up to The Celebration (1998) is surprisingly creepy. Set in a frigid, stylistically retro future, John (Joaquin Phoenix), a Polish literary figure, becomes fed up with his frequently absent wife, ice skating star Elena (Claire Danes, with a graceful Polish accent). Flippantly deciding their love is geographically impossible, John sends her divorce papers, which Elena will not sign, believing their marriage isn’t over.

Determined to complete the paperwork, John follows Elena to the frighteningly apocalyptic New York of the future. Outside of the limo lies a city littered with children’s dead bodies, shoved in garbage cans and lying on the road. Soon the adults too begin dropping like flies, and like true New Yorkers, Elena and John simply step over any corpse blocking the subway entrance. “People are dying from a lack of intimacy,” says John’s friend Michael (Douglas Henshall), suggesting the existence of love between the couple is literally a matter of life or death. The world climate, echoing the new frigidity between John and Elena, has begun to enter the ice age. The city now sees snow storms in the middle of summer while the people of Uganda suffer a loss of gravity.

And Elena’s skating stardom comes with a high price. The Mafia-like family managing her career decides to have her replaced, believing Elena’s tainted heart will eventually cost them their empire. Soon Elena is face to face with screeching, brain-damaged clones of herself. And with a price on Elena’s head, John decides to aid her in her escape.

Director Vinterberg chose to shoot the film going against the Dogma 95 filmmaking rules he created with Lars von Trier. While the Dogma system requires entirely natural settings and handheld cameras, Vinterberg chose instead to opt for high-gloss film quality and entirely artificial sets. Although the over-stylized look works to echo the film's theme, it winds up looking very much like the Cremaster film series. The actors, and most noticeably Danes, come off well, evoking enough off-the-wall emotion through the devastating chain of events. These visually horrifying scenes succeed in scaring the audience, but like the cold world it depicts, the film never holds a heartbeat or a spot of warmth. Desolate and empty, It’s All About Love proves that a world without love and a film without soul are truly horrifying things. Adrienne Urbanski
October 29, 2004