Open Hearts presents a melodramatic, laughably offhand situation so straightforwardly you wonder if it might have been a joke. It begins and ends with a solarized, purpled vision of crowded streets, to the femme ballad that repeats as the film drones along, with the refrain “It’s funny when you think about it.” At first the music seems to capture the abstract return to comfort its lead Cecilie so desires; but as soon as we come back to why she desires that vague reflection we have to face the dull mechanics of the story. “Funny” is about as insightful a dissection of life as the movie can ultimately serve.

Perhaps it’s a matter of narrative inevitability. In the opening scenes, Cecilie and her boyfriend, Joachim, become engaged, and he buys her lingerie. Then he gets run over by the wife of a surgeon who will be involved with his care-taking. What a coincidence; and who could guess that feelings of great sadness and remorse would come from Niels, the surgeon, and transform into unwelcome romance? Who could guess that Joachim’s sexual frustration could warp into nastiness, to the point where he taunts a nurse about a personal tragedy of her own? These characters are all so terribly expressive of their own platitudes of emotional angst that the movie never sizzles with uncertainty, only sympathy.

The most overdone, offensively contrived scene in the film, in fact, should include, and does to some extent, a template of varying, confused emotions: the one where Stine, Niels’ daughter, confronts Cecilie about her affair with Niels. “Stay away,” she says, only to turn to self-blame and then back to naivete again at the practical drop of an arbitrary hat. Maybe the title is a metaphor for the unplanned, sporadic stupidity of the characters, giving each other bad advice (e.g. the mother to the daughter) and engaging in repetitive, trite defensiveness, surrendering to the notion that devotion between Joachim and Cecilie is important while making it look like she’s fucking Niels for the sheer sake of feeling conflicted.

The obvious negative comparison I could use here is Breaking the Waves: while Bess’ ignorance underlines the length of her sacrifice and hope, Cecilie is practically a cipher, going through the motions of being at odds with her own needy persona, controlled by the sympathies of men except when she wanders off daydreaming about nothing. While Bess needs pain and love for no particular reason, one she’s trying to find, Cecilie might as well be measuring hers with a meter stick. And while Bess becomes a symbol for the capacity of performance and transcendence, Cecilie is casually angelic, being disdained and shattered for doing what is right for her right now. Frankly, all she warrants is sympathy, which is less than as interesting a feeling as I want to have for a movie character.

3.15.03

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