"The Commune" at the center of Thomas Vinterberg's film isn't typical of the communes I knew back in the day. For a start, the members of this one are reasonably well off and are mostly middle-aged and, of course, they bring to this 'living together' thing all the baggage you would expect. Things come to a head when commune founder Erik, (Ulrich Thomsen), falls for one of his students and moves her in leading his wife Anna, (Trine Dyrholm), to have a nervous breakdown.
Vinterberg's film began life as a play and it's certainly very theatrical but despite the emotional conflicts at the film's heart, it's also fairly conventional with everyone other than Erik and Anna fading very much into the background. You never get to know any of them. Subplots come and go and it just trudges on. On the plus side, it's very well acted particularly by Dyrholm who won the Best Actress prize at Berlin; she's the only one you actually care about. It might have worked better on stage where at least you could feel 'in the same place' as these commune-dwellers. On screen, it just feels like another piece of Vinterberg navel-gazing.
Vinterberg's film began life as a play and it's certainly very theatrical but despite the emotional conflicts at the film's heart, it's also fairly conventional with everyone other than Erik and Anna fading very much into the background. You never get to know any of them. Subplots come and go and it just trudges on. On the plus side, it's very well acted particularly by Dyrholm who won the Best Actress prize at Berlin; she's the only one you actually care about. It might have worked better on stage where at least you could feel 'in the same place' as these commune-dwellers. On screen, it just feels like another piece of Vinterberg navel-gazing.