Kim Magnusson
Occupation
Filmmaker
Flickering Lights Review
Excellent
Director Anders Thomas Jensen's previous credits includes Dogme 95 screenplays (The King is Alive, Mifune). He won an Academy Award in 1999 for his short film Election Night and has been nominated for two others. Jensen's impressive background translates into an equally impressive debut feature. Flickering Lights is dark and occasionally violent, but is a thoroughly enjoyable and often comic story of four childhood friends who confront their past and build a future together.Flickering Lights boasts an impressive cast from a broad range of Danish films and television (Mifune, The Celebration, Pusher, The Kingdom), which is put to good use by Jensen's witty script and slow but deliberate direction. Torkild (Søren Pilmark) is the head of a small time gang, pulling small jobs for a gangster known only as the Eskimo. After his 40th birthday and a botched heist involving 4 million krones, Torkild and his gang are forced to hide out in an abandoned inn in the middle of nowhere. The gang has to wait only until Peter (Ulrich Thomsen), who was shot, is well enough to travel, so they can continue on to Barcelona. But after meeting some of the locals and finding moments of peace in this secluded hideaway, Torkild conveniences the rest of the gang that staying put may be the future for which they are all looking. The gang uses the money to buy the inn and renovate it, making it into quaint family restaurant that people drive for miles to visit, not because of the food (the boys apparently never learn to cook), but for the atmosphere.
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