Keeping it in the family
FLEETING glances, forced smiles, nervous laughter, classic one-liners – if this is the behavioural stuff of manifold dinner table scenes in cinema, then ‘Festen’ willingly lends itself to that socio-aesthetic heritage. The inaugural work of the experimental Dogme 95 genre, this award-winning 1998 film, directed and co-written by Thomas Vinterberg, couches its title action in the gathering of an extended family to mark patriarch Helge’s (Henning Moritzen) sixtieth birthday. Helge’s success as a businessman is manifest – the setting for the action, a sprawling, family-run country hotel, confirms his commercial gravitas – but it is within the film’s narratological heart, an epic meal for friends and loved ones, that the cracks in their seamless bourgeois stability begin soberingly to appear.
One of Helge’s daughters, Helene (Paprika Steen) finds the suicide note of her sister, Linda. Meanwhile, a speech made by her brother, Christian (Ulrich Thomsen), brings otherwise jovial proceedings to a halt by suggesting that he and Helene were, as children, abused by Helge. Despite the dismissive reaction of the guests, Christian’s claims are confirmed when, later, Helene reads Linda’s suicide note, revealing the latter’s own molestation by her father, that paragon, outwardly, of decency and respectability. Yet this is just one revelation in a complex, multi-layered story of family ties, broken and otherwise.
Powerful and compellingly shot, Festen is a masterpiece of contemporary European cinema. Surreal, challenging and funny, it is a seminal work that demands – and richly rewards – audience attention.
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