Photo: Peter Schønau Fog's The Art of Crying
Peter Schønau Fog's Dutch hot-potato The Art of Crying is a failure, mostly for its desperate sense of trying. The term "reality of life" is referenced throughout the film, which could apply to life on the festival circuit, where these Solondzesque nightmares are becoming commonplace. Set in South Jutland in 1971, the film's story concerns a family's attempts to cope with a father's repeated threats of suicide. When Allan (Jannik Lorenzen) learns that Dad (Jesper Asholt) experiences a sense of purpose after giving a eulogy for the son of a business competitor, the young boy conspires to kill a relative. Seemingly innocuous, the film is told (not uninterestingly but still somewhat lazily in an attempt to shirk character development elsewhere) from the point of view of this naïve little boy, who doesn't quite understand why his sister Sanne (Julie Kolbeck) puts her hands between Dad's legs whenever the old man starts weeping. Ed Gonzalez
Peter Schønau Fog's Dutch hot-potato The Art of Crying is a failure, mostly for its desperate sense of trying. The term "reality of life" is referenced throughout the film, which could apply to life on the festival circuit, where these Solondzesque nightmares are becoming commonplace. Set in South Jutland in 1971, the film's story concerns a family's attempts to cope with a father's repeated threats of suicide. When Allan (Jannik Lorenzen) learns that Dad (Jesper Asholt) experiences a sense of purpose after giving a eulogy for the son of a business competitor, the young boy conspires to kill a relative. Seemingly innocuous, the film is told (not uninterestingly but still somewhat lazily in an attempt to shirk character development elsewhere) from the point of view of this naïve little boy, who doesn't quite understand why his sister Sanne (Julie Kolbeck) puts her hands between Dad's legs whenever the old man starts weeping. Ed Gonzalez
