FAmilies like ours are a drama-directing and companion written by Oscar-winning Danish director Thomas Vinterberg-who asked the question: what would you do if your luck was exhausted? The kind that you may find is born with a healthy body, or in a privilege, developed country, or with skin color that does not invite discrimination against others. Maybe even all of the above. What if life as you know – stable, easy, reliable, cushioned – upside down? What is it?
The seven-part series is set to Denmark in a near future where the Dutch economy crashes, flooding nearby Netherlands countries with immigrants looking for work, eating capacity and good mood. Thus there is little available when the government announces that the threat obtained at low-lying Denmark by global heating and increasing sea levels means that it should evacuate these six million inhabitants. The country is, in effect, closed.
So Vinterberg takes what most of us treat as an existing threat, a problem that is huge and scary to think about, and puts it in a more governed frame. Rendering it is smaller and more powerful, we follow a number of characters through the decisions they are trying to make as the massive removal begins.
Some have a preliminary notice of the government’s announcement and use it -illegal, but who is not, is the first question we have made to ask ourselves -to reflect on the properties before the market crash and withdraw the savings before the restrictions are brought. Among them were Nikolaj (Esben Smed), a government employee, who tells his wife, Henrik, (Magnus Millang), and his brother Amalie (Helene Reingaard Neumin). Henrik’s mind -changing mind, homophobic brother Peter (David Dencik) is also removed and from him comes from most violent incidents that Vinterberg’s naturalistic approach is otherwise Eschews. Sometimes, you wonder if it’s too much eschews. There are reports of social excitement but there is little on the screen that makes you wonder if the drama can’t afford to tighten a little more. Lots of conversations about the necessary documents located, the visas to be applied, allowed to be amassed and so many scenes placed on desks from the bureaucrats of the cold heart that you can get the first few stages that feel like you have a better idea of how to arrange a national discharge than how it can be caught up in one.
The other characters we follow are with Amalie’s wife Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), an architect in charge of using her connections to get her family a coveted pathway to France. But his daughter Laura (Amaryllis August), from her first marriage, was torn between going to her (to take her place to Sorbonne or go with her less rich and connected mother, Fanny (Paprika Sten), in her state organized in Romania (possible Vinterberg Rudbeck Lindhardt) of love “that gives a lot of time for what it added to the show. It is important to say goodbye to him forever.
Families like ours have been a hit with viewers and critics from the inaugural showing at last year’s Venice Film Festival. And many are amazed. It does not preach, it has themes that work by characters instead of other ways of rotating (and there is a cast that is stuffed with Danish weights to help it). But all of this felt a bit thin, a little blood -free – like a contents -made experiment than a compelling, provocative drama. The script does not understand and the relentless bad decisions made by the characters, which seems to be privileged not only to be unexplained but active stupid, too, gives a little air flagellation to the litigation. One is amazed, perhaps, but not to love – and therefore the one that the message can, if you try, will stop.
