Queen of Hearts
Dronningen

Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy's second feature film weaves a dark tragedy disguised as upscale, Adrian-Lyneque erotica. The always riveting Trine Dyrholm (A Royal Affair, Love is All You Need, The Commune, Nico, 1988) gives another exquisitely controlled performance of a character who lacks impulse control. Here, she plays Anne, an advocacy lawyer who works with vulnerable children and young adults, currently serving as counsel for the victim in a rape case. Liberal-minded and sexually candid, she lives a comfortable life with her Swedish doctor husband, Peter (Magnus Krepper), and their twin girls. Their world is perhaps a little too comfortable and predictable, so she welcomes the idea of Peter's estranged teenage son, Gustav, coming to live with them. Gustav (Gustav Lindh), expelled from school and Peter's ex-wife's home in Sweden, is a typical sullen teen who bristles against his father's attempts to force a belated connection while enforcing the rules of the well-established home life. Anne finds the new arrival intriguing and allows her forbidden desire for the young man to flourish until she aggressively acts on it. Once she makes that choice, there is no going back.

The film's title refers to Alice in Wonderland, a book Anna and Gustav read to the young twins. Linking that book's primary antagonist to this film's lead character implies a level of ferocious, unchecked, and distinctly female villainy in our protagonist. Dyrholm's chilly, nuanced performance makes Anna the opposite of the volatile and out-of-control queen who menaced Alice in a surrealistic setting, but is she any less predatory? And are the events that unfold in this story all that more grounded in understandable principles? The film raises fascinating and disturbing questions about human nature in the typically frank yet understated way Danish cinema does so well. I only wish Lindh gave as complex a performance as Dyrholm, but part of the film's point is that his character is not Anna's equal by any conceivable measurement.