Rationale:

In Jeanette Nordahl’s Beginnings, it is understood that life does not follow a straight line or the curves of conventional film dramaturgy. The fact is that life can be unfair, get ugly, and be difficult. And sometimes, progress is about taking two steps forwards and one step back.

Ane and Thomas are going through a divorce when Ane gets a blood clot. This leaves Thomas’ impending life with his new girlfriend in limbo – and their family life with two girls in a crisis that leaves deep marks on all four of them.

Ane and Thomas fall apart. But the situation also makes them see each other with a tenderness that decades of marriage have otherwise worn away. While their love couldn’t survive in prosperity, perhaps it can in adversity. And in just an hour and a half, Nordahl and co-screenwriter Rasmus Birch envelop us in the couple’s longings, realisations, and struggle for dignity in the new situation, in a deeply human way.

The film could easily have become melodramatic. Instead, it is astonishingly raw when Ane smears remoulade all over her face around the dinner table, eye-openingly beautiful in a believable sex scene, and memorably redemptive when Ane dances on the living room floor. Jeanette Nordahl lets the precise images and glances speak without the current tendency to overexplain – helped by flawless performances from a fearless Trine Dyrholm and the stalwart David Dencik.

As a reverse infidelity drama, Beginnings asks big questions about love, fidelity, and acceptance. It lives on in one’s own life, painfully and hopefully, long after one has seen it.