Queen of Hearts

The opening film of Oslo Pix 2019 is Queen of Hearts – a nuanced and uncompromising feature about fateful family relations and abuse of power. The film has received high praise from audiences and critics alike in its native Denmark.

Trine Dyrholm brilliantly plays out her full register as an actress, in the leading role of Anne; career woman and matriarch. She lives with her Swedish husband Peter and their twin daughters in a luxurious mansion outside of Copenhagen, and runs a law firm which specialises in working with children and young people. Anne rules with a gentle hand. Enter Gustav, Peters teenage son from a previous relationship. After years of little to no contact, Gustav arrives to live with his estranged father and the family. He and Anne soon develop a close relationship. But what starts as a touching display of mutual confidence, soon develops into something much darker which puts the entire family life at risk.

Without ever becoming speculative or overstated, Queen of Hearts turns familiar gender roles on their heads in its powerful description of a power relation. We become sympathetic towards Anne because she is a complex and imperfect human; soon after, this sense of sympathy is critically challenged as Anne fights desperately to maintain everything she has built for herself. The film is beautifully shot and wisely staged by director May el-Toukhy, who has based the narrative upon several years worth of research.

Not since Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998) has a film received such unanimous praise from Danish film critics. Don’t miss out on the Norwegian premiere of Queen of Hearts, at Oslo Pix!