Love is All You Need (2013)

Susanne Bier is one of my favorite directors and her film 'After the Wedding' is one of my favorite films--she has made powerful films that have been truthful and painful, and that make you think.  This is a little bit less intense, although in the tradition of all great Danish films, there is a lot of dysfunctional family on show here as well.

Ida (Trine Dyrholm) is the centerpiece of the movie.  She has just finished  treatment for breast cancer and her prognosis is unknown.  She comes home from her final oncology appointment of active treatment to find her husband Lief having sex with someone about their daughter's age.  She is so shocked she can hardly speak, which allows Lief time to dig his own grave--the treatment had been very hard on him--yes, he was having an affair with her before his wife had breast cancer, but the added stress made it worse.  What was a man to do?  He seems truly clueless about how narcissistic he sounds--and is.  No matter, Ida's daughter is getting married in Italy and she sets off on her own to attend--en route she meets Phillip (Pierce Brosnan)--by ramming her car into his.  Which he takes remarkably well when all is said and done.  The weekend wedding unfolds with a number of snafu's but Phillip, who has been angry at everyone since he wife was killed in a car accident many years ago, starts to thaw a bit around Ida. She has a way of calling him out on his life priorities and over the week they spend together he becomes quite fond of her.  It is a predictable plot, when all is said and done, but it is so beautifully executed that I was very forgiving of that, and as a middle aged woman myself, it is lovely to see love portrayed in that age range.