"after the wedding'"and "things we lost in the fire"

!!!spoiler alert!!!

i watched "after the wedding" and "things we lost in the fire" january 2. both are the artsy fartsy, beat around the bush type. "after the wedding" is far more interesting. a terminally ill billionaire entrepreneur in copenhagen, jorgen, attempts to persuade his wife, helene's, old flame, jacob, to take his place in life after he passes. jorgen lures jacob, who is on the staff of a struggling orphanage in india, back to copenhagen with the pretext of an endownment. and the date of the interview just so happens to coincide with jorgen's daughter, anna's, wedding. and so of course, jacob is invited. during the wedding, jacob realizes anna is really his daughter. eventually, when jacob also realizes his role in jorgen's plan, he has serious reservations...

the movie has quite a memorable quote; jorgen's plea to jacob: "do i have to live on the other side of the world to get your help?"

what was interesting was that the movie never makes it explicit, until the end, whether jorgen knows who jacob really is and when he knows who jacob really is. i was left guessing at different points during the wedding scene, through all of jacob and helene's uncomfortable looks and conversations, whether jorgen was going to wise up to their former relationship and what jorgen would do when he finally came to the conclusion that jacob has far greater claim to his own family. i was prepared for some shocking turn of events, but all the tension diffuses into what's expected and expedient.

rating: 6/10

"things we lost in the fire" is a lot more forgettable. audrey loses her husband brian in a random act of violence, and she is having a difficult time coping. she invites brian's best friend jerry, a recovering junkie, to move in, possibly out of guilt at having made certain assumptions about him. (she had assumed jerry stole some money that really only slipped between her car seats.) things go swimmingly ;) (jerry is able to coax her son, dory, to put his head under water in the swimming pool, something brian was never able to do.) and we get a sense of certain level of attraction between audrey and jerry. but when audrey realizes that jerry has become an integral part of their lives and understands her own kids better than she herself does, she throws him out, and he goes back to drugs...

i felt i was watching the events in the movie unfold in real time. i was this close to just giving up midway through. stories of this sort shouldn't be told through the celluloid medium.

rating: 5/10