Love Is All You Need
Den skaldede frisør
The Bald Hairdresser

Den skaldede frisør (The Bald Hairdresser), released in America under the title Love is All You Need, is a mainstream romantic comedy from the heretofore austere Danish director Susanne Bier (After the Wedding, In a Better World and Things We Lost in the Fire). Bier’s first foray into more commercial waters stars Trine Dyrholm and Pierce Brosnan as damaged, middle-aged people who travel to Italy for the wedding of their respective children. Brosnan’s wife is long dead, and Dyrholm’s husband is an unfaithful slob. They naturally start off on the wrong foot, but a strong connection forms between them over the course of the nuptials. The film moves through all the expected beats of the rom-com formula, offering the audience no surprises apart from the shock of how disarmingly effective it is. There is a distinctly Danish sense of doom that the undercuts the ebullient, comedic contrivances of the wedding sub-genre and works against its natural tendencies to dissolve into saccharine twaddle. The picture initially appears to be as trifling as 2008’s Mamma Mia, but it unfolds with the assuredness of 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding--in my opinion, the last potent entry in the straight-up, unapologetic, pre-ironic incarnation of the romantic comedy.

The film aims for an older audience than most of its contemporaries and it harkens back to the days when this genre was more concerned with the “rom” than the “com.” Bier and her frequent collaborator, the screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, aren't out to make a raunchy, subversive farce like 2005’s Wedding Crashers, but they’re also avoiding the dead-on-arrival malaise of films like 2008’s Last Chance Harvey or this year’s The Big Wedding. Dyrholm is a refreshing change of pace from the glamorous lead actresses we’ve come to expect in films of this kind.  Her features are capable of transforming from expressive but plain to stunningly beautiful, as in the best rom-coms from the genre’s second heyday in the 1980s (Think of Cher when she finally colored her hair and put on that black dress to meet Nicolas Cage at the Met in Moonstruck). Age hasn’t improved Pierce Brosnan's acting, but it has added some welcome character to his tuxedo-encrusted screen presence. The two actors have the endearing, grown-up chemistry that has been missing in American romantic comedies for the last twenty-five years. It is a surprising film for Bier, but I would love to see her make more pictures of this kind.