Review by Lucía Santiago Dantés
Love is… complicated.
Is this the beginning of the EuroHollywood era? if so, it was about time! Danish Director Sussane Bier, better known for snagging the Oscar for Best Foreign Drama and the Golden Globe in 2011 for her film “In a Better World” comes back this time with a romantic comedy drama called “Love is All You Need”.
Ida (Trine Dyrholm) is a woman fighting cancer who one day arrives home just to find out her husban is having an affair with a coworker under the same roof they both lived and procreated 2 children. The oldest one, Astrid (Molly Blixt Egelind) is getting married and Ida, being a good mother decides this is not time to focus on her complicated life a sets off to Italy where her daughter is marrying. Philip (Pierce Brosnan) is a widowed workaholic businessman who has to travel to Italy to his son’s wedding. At the airport Ida and Philip literally bump into each other not knowing who they are. After they figure out who are attached to, they reluctantly start to develop a sense of acquaintanceship. Ida realizes as soon as she arrive to the villa that her soon to be ex husband has arrived with her new fiancée, creating an awkward ambient among the relatives, bride and groom. Even more complicated Patrick’s state of mind (Sebastian Jessen). Under all these chaos, new alliances and relationships bloom and die in front of the audience.
The story I must say, captured my attention from beginning until the end. Maybe because of the romantic locations in Italy, or because we all love complicated love stories, or because somehow we believe that such stories do have a happy ending and life can be beautiful no matter how complicated are our relationships. In a way, it is cathartic to see someone else having more troubles and at the end, everything works out fine no matter how bad the problem is.
The film is nicely done, entertaining and quite good to enjoy it. You’ll probably end it up watching it on cable or DVD rental but if you’re on a lazy afternoon and want to see a less complicated story this is the movie for you. You won’t regret it.
El Kiosko Magazine 