Allegro [2005] [DVD] [2006]

This is very much a movie for grownups by which I mean those people who believe that films belong to the visual arts and aren't just vehicles for stars, special effects or product placement. Other reviewers here have covered the ground in terms of the content and significance of "Allegro" and I will merely add that if you like your drama dark, your stories complex and unsettling, and your entertainment thought-provoking as well as thoroughly enjoyable, this is your kind of picture. Why not five stars? Structurally the film needed some tightening but it's well worth seeing.

It's a story set in Copenhagen that takes place largely at night, in private, timeless places within the city, and also in the transitional places, the thoroughfares, the places between places. In this city, a man--through inattention, through carelessness--separates from his past, misplaces the foundational element of his identity. A woman is involved (of course), but the real problem lies entirely with him. She is a mirage of his own making, and, pathetically, he employs only the most futile methods in attempting to reach her. Finally, he makes a terrible error and becomes stuck in his own purgatorial tale, unsure where to turn and retracing his way through his private world, a world he should know--but does not--as well as he knows his own skin.

This, in a nutshell, is the premise not only for Christoffer Boe's new film, "Allegro," but also for "Reconstruction," his 2003 debut which earned both the Camera d'Or and Youth Prize awards at Cannes. Many reviewers have called Boe's work "surreal," though it falls, more properly, within the postmodern mode of "metafiction." A metafictional tale is a self-conscious story, one that continually reminds you that it is a contrivance, a construction. Indeed, the term "construction" is stressed at the opening of "Reconstruction," and the governing metaphor--both visually and thematically--for "Allegro" is a simple box container. Also, each film is narrated by a controlling figure who not only ushers the audience from one act of the film to the next but manipulates events backstage and also occasionally walks boldly into the story itself. As for precedents, in both Boe films one feels the echoes of recent work by David Lynch and Charlie Kaufman and also of Lars von Trier's early, rich, pre-Dogma period.

"Reconstruction" is the story of a man who cheats on his girlfriend and wakes the next day to find that no one from his past life remembers him. "Allegro" is slightly more complicated. It deals with another Copenhagen man, Zetterstrom (Ulrich Thomsen), who has come to depend on the psychological crutch of stowing events from his past in a remote, sealed container. However, when a woman enters his life, at middle age, and Zetterstrom falls in love for the first time, he is unable to shake loose from his old way of living. Their love ends in disaster, and ten years later he learns that his past has overflowed its container and erupted physically, in a paranormal manner. Incredibly, his past has sealed off--behind impervious, invisible walls--several blocks of a neighborhood in Copenhagen where Zetterstrom once lived. It is a place that the city comes to refer to as "The Zone."

This new film has not been nearly as popular with audiences or critics as was Boe's first. While it is true that "Reconstruction" is a more powerful film, "Allegro" is a significant work in its own right. And recognizing this, one must also take into account that the peculiarities of each film are entirely suited to its story and to the protagonist's personality. The technical busyness of "Allegro" is entirely appropriate to Zetterstrom's character, both as a concert pianist and a man who plays underhanded games with his own psychology. And if the film's plot contains many detours and cul-de-sacs, this too is appropriate to the tired, aimless, middle-aged character.

A very interesting concept motivates this Danish film by Christoffer Boe, that someone's forgotten past and everything connected with it can become frozen in time. It is 'Avante Garde' in that the story line is a series of fragmented associations which are inconclusive, often in monochrome. Some of the story is outlined literally by short cartoon inserts, with diagrams and directional arrows, tracing the childhood of Zetterstrom and his development into an international Concert Pianist, and his fleeting affair with Andrea. Ulrich Thomsen plays Zetterstrom as an adult who maybe has lost the ability to love and feel in his struggle to reach perfection. Extracts similar to the Allegro in Greig's piano Concerto are heard throughout, and supermodel Helena Christensen debuts here as Andrea the woman who gives him his international image of being perfectly dressed but without bow tie, which she confiscates. Hence signifying maybe that the perfect Allegro of his life may always be incomplete, or that he can defy convention, whilst adhering to it.

On his return to Copenhagen for a Gala concert after a long sojourn in New York, Zetterstrom is given a mysterious invitation to the 'Zone' in the centre of the city which has become a life size image, which shudders when hit like a large perspex window, and is guarded by soldiers. This has to be accessed through - wait for it- the Ladies toilets in the Concert Hall. A very congenial older male host makes him confront his memories and failures in this 'time warp' and Zetterstrom still manages to make his performance on time and meet officials to the relief of a very high powered co-ordinator.

In a seminar mainly composed of students, Christoffer Boe says he tried to keep the film light hearted. Maybe meditating in the various unisex or other toilet arrangements around the world is theraputic.