August
24, 2007, release date
Directed
by Ole Bornedal
Screenplay
by Ole Bornedal
Music by
Joachim Holbek
Edited by
Anders Villadsen
Cinematography
by Dan Laustsen
Anders W. Berthelsen as Jonas
Rebecka Hemse as Julia
Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Sebastian
Charlotte Fich as Mette
Dejan Čukić as Frank
Karsten Jansfort as Poul
Flemming Enevold as Overlæge
Dichmann
Bent Mejding as Mr. Castlund
Ewa Fröling as Mrs. Castlund
KOCH
Lorber Films, LP
The opening sequence of Just Another Love Story consists of
three “love scenes” numbered by the director as “Love scene no. 1,” “Love scene
no. 2,” and “Love scene no. 3.” They lay out the intertwining stories to come
in the film.
• Love scene no. 1: Jonas: [in
voice-over] “Dear Mette, I don’t know where I am going. Only that I’ve got my
back against the planet and I’m on my way away.”
• Love scene no. 2: Mette: “Do you
know where they [acetaminophen tablets] are?” Jonas: “Yes, near the equator.”
• Love scene no. 3: Sebastian:
“Here. [moves gun in Julia’s hand from the side of his head to his heart] Or I
won’t be able to see you.”
Right away I wanted to know what
would come next in this film. The stories of all the characters are intertwined
in ways that are hard to predict from these opening “love scenes,” but because
so much of the film is told in flashback, the characters are already known to
one another; the viewer is the newcomer, the only one who doesn’t know what
comes next in the plot.
After these so-called love scenes,
the story returns to Jonas and his marriage. He is rebuffed by his wife after
their lovemaking is interrupted by one of their children. His wife and now his
daughter find it easy to fall asleep, but Jonas is left with his imagination.
In a voice-over, he explains how he finds adventure (and apparently
distraction) through reading:
Tibetan monks think that sexual
abstinence gives you absolute insight. All I could see was darkness. But from
bed height, I could see a long way. My agents reported back on everything. The
secretive coasts of Polynesia. The deserts of Arizona. The reefs of the Dead
Sea. I was king of the world, and my throne stood far to the north in a tiny
country that called itself Denmark. . . .
It is implied in Love scene no. 2
that one of Jonas’s loves is adventure, and this desire for adventure, and the
accompanying excitement, is what starts the events in his life that he will
find powerless to stop once they are set in motion.
(This blog post about Just Another Love Story contains
spoilers.)
Everything about
this film was economical. Some of the filming techniques move the plot ahead in
ways that make the entire film smooth and tight:
• The opening and closing shots of
the main character Jonas in the pouring rain, with Jonas talking in voice-over,
were beautiful and moving. As the film progressed from the opening shot, I got
so caught up in the story that I forgot that it started with Jonas bleeding out
on wet pavement and that most of the film is told in flashback.
• The closing credits over shots
from what I think are Vietnam are also amazing. I can’t help thinking that the
closing is meant to show Julia filming and then Sebastian doing what he does to
destroy anything that Julia wants or does, but that’s my interpretation. The
fact that even the shots behind the closing credits are open to interpretation
is pretty amazing.
• The use of a process shot during
the scene at the car accident shows Jonas in the foreground and Julia, as she
looks after her accident, in the background. She will play a large role in
Jonas’s life, and Jonas is aware of this fact from this moment in the film onward.
He states as much in voice-over, but viewers are unaware just yet of the
enormity of his statements.
• In several sequences, scenes and
dialogue are spliced together to show Jonas’s confused state of mind. He is
married to Mette, but he thinks of Julia almost constantly. In voice-over, he
tells the viewer what he is thinking, but then he blurts a thought out loud,
and the viewer is reminded (as is Jonas) that he is married and he is in
Mette’s company, not Julia’s.
There’s a femme fatale in this film,
but she is not a typical femme fatale. Jonas gets swept away, but not because
Julia is trying to seduce him. In fact, she’s just been injured in a car crash,
and the viewer wonders about Jonas’s good sense from the beginning when he
falls in love with her as she lies bleeding in the roadway. Even his friends,
Frank and Poul, can’t understand what he’s doing. They know he is married (to
Mette), but Julia doesn’t. Jonas misleads Julia, not the other way around.
Just
Another Love Story has a strong
female lead in Julia. She may ultimately triumph and achieve her goal, but it
comes at a heavy price. Everyone, including Julia, suffers. Julia is the one who finally kills Sebastian. She does get away from him,
just like she wanted, but she’s carrying his child because Sebastian raped her
while she was in a coma. (Dr. Dichmann, who works in the hospital where Julia
is recuperating after the car accident, confronts Jonas about it because Jonas
is posing as Sebastian, but it is not his child.)
Jonas’s friend Frank poses several matter-of-fact
questions about life that Jonas ignores, much to his peril. Here are two
examples.
• Jonas is considering visiting
Julia in the hospital after the car accident, and right away, Frank thinks he
is making a mistake. He wants to know if Jonas thinks she is beautiful. Jonas
doesn’t answer this question directly, but Frank persists: “Beautiful woman and
a mystery. Isn’t that how all film noirs begin?” It is a warning, but Jonas
will not be deterred.
• And then there’s the one Frank
poses about love in the autopsy room while he and Jonas are standing next to
naked corpses (both work for the local police department). Frank tells Jonas
that he thinks Muslims have it right: that sex should be used for procreation;
falling in love just makes a person crazy. He delights in reading one of the
corpses’ suicide notes because he believes the note sounds banal to everyone
else but the writer. It shows how easy it is to lose sight of the big picture
when one is carried away by emotion. It’s a great scene that is lost on Jonas.
Frank is probably the best friend
Jonas has, but a good friend isn’t enough to stop fate, to stop the events that
Jonas has set in motion. And, of course, a protagonist who cannot escape fate
is a hallmark of noir. In Just Another
Love Story, the events from someone else’s past (that is, Julia’s) has a
profound effect on Jonas. He cannot escape Julia’s fate because he willingly
embraces it as his own and then cannot do anything about it once events spiral
out of everyone’s control.
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