(Denmark/Germany/Sweden/Norway, 92 min.)
Dir. Mikkel Nørgaard, Writ. Nikolaj Arcel
Starring: Nikolaj Lee Kaas, Sonja Richter, Fares Fares, Peter Plaugborg, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard,
Anyone debating seeing Secret in Their Eyes this weekend might want to reconsider and catch Keeper of Lost Causes at the European
Union Film Festival instead. This dark Danish co-production is a gritty crime
drama. Much like the difference between the remake of Secret in Their Eyes and the original, this foreign affair suggests
that thrillers are best done with subtitles.
This dark and mysterious thriller stars Nikolaj Lee Kaas (The Killing, The Whistleblower) as brooding, grumpy cop Carl Mørck, who lands the thankless job of sorting through cold cases after his previous assignment leaves one of his partners dead and the other wounded. Carl sifts through the boxes and stumbles on a bizarre missing persons case. The case involves the disappearance of Merete (Sonja Richter, The Homesman), who vanished in a strange occurrence on a ferry. With no body on board and no body afloat, people just assume she either fell or jumped off the boat.
Carl reopens the case with his new partner, Assad (Fares
Fares, Zero Dark Thirty), and
together the revisit the clues and evidence, which includes reviewing a range
of shoddy cop work and being patient with Merete’s withdrawn and mentally
challenged brother (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), who was the last person to see her
on the boat. Their investigation reveals a trail that any decent cop should
have discovered. It becomes apparent that Merete was probably murdered.
Cut to a dark, dank cavern. It’s a pressure chamber. In it,
a woman shivers with fear as a voice beckons through a speaker. It’s Merete.
She’s alive, for now.
The Keeper of Lost
Causes plays with perceptions of time as the screenplay by Nicolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) fractures the timeline
to generate suspense. Carl’s story and Merete’s story move at different paces.
His investigation reveals that five years have passed, but when we first see
Merete, the unseen voice—a Jigsaw-like sadist—leaves her with two buckets and
says that he’ll return in one year. There’s no way anyone could survive such
confinement and deprivation. As the two narratives converge and Carl learns
more about the case, the question becomes not what happened, but whether he
chases a ghost.
The dark edge of Keeper
of Lost Causes seems cater-made for fans of the Swedish Millennium trilogy as Carl and Assad tag
team the case like Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist: one is a brooding
anti-social curmudgeon, while the other is more hopeful and chipper. Strong
performances from Kaas and Fares create an effective buddy cop dynamic with the
former playing the bad cop and the latter playing the good one. They’re fun
together, and Fares especially brings a lightness and humour that offsets the
sombreness of Kaas’s performance.
Similarly, the original Swedish title of the Millennium trilogy’s first instalment, Men Who Hate Women (known here as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), could
apply here just as easily as does to the cornerstone of the popular computer
hacker trilogy. The heart of Merete’s disappearance is one of psychopathic
misogyny and Carl’s investigation touches upon men who prey on women as witnesses
give evidence that the key to Merete’s case is a one-night stand that began
maliciously, unbeknownst to her. Similarly, the progress of her incarceration
in the pressure chamber reveals a ruthless pleasure her captor (a creepy Peter
Plaugborg) gains from watching her. She’s an object meant for his cheap thrills
and victory.
The tension unfortunately flattens two-thirds away through
the film as Keeper of Lost Causes
reveals the outcome of Merete’s disappearance in a thorough montage, but the
film remains entertaining as a straightforward procedural as Carl compels
himself to seek justice for Merete at any cost. Moody cinematography ensures a
lingering sense of menace at every turn, too, as Carl encounters twists in
Merete’s story that should never have been buried in a box in the bureau. The
secret in Keeper of Lost Causes isn’t
so much in the eyes of the players, but what dangers linger in the shadows of familiar
places.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Keeper of Lost Causes screens at the European Union Film Festival on Saturday,
Nov. 21 at The ByTowne.
Please visit www.cfi-icf.ca for more information.
It also screens at EUFF Toronto on Saturday, Nov. 21
at The Royal.
Click here for more EUFF coverage.
