Kærlighed på Film (Just Another Love Story) (2008)

72% of critics liked it
(43 reviews)
80% of users liked it
(1,633 ratings)

Nightwatch director Ole Bornedal returns to quicken the pulse of thriller fans with this genre-bending tale of a crime scene photographer and family man who is violently shaken out of his suburban malaise following a fateful car accident. Jonas makes his living by capturing gruesome crime scenes in… More Nightwatch director Ole Bornedal returns to quicken the pulse of thriller fans with this genre-bending tale of a crime scene photographer and family man who is violently shaken out of his suburban malaise following a fateful car accident. Jonas makes his living by capturing gruesome crime scenes in all of their lurid detail, yet lately the beleaguered shutterbug has grown increasingly despondent in both his career and his personal life. One day, while driving through the city, Jonas is involved in a car accident with a young woman named Julia. Unconscious due to the impact of the crash, Julia is rushed to the hospital. Later, a concerned Jonas makes a special trip to check in on Julia, and finds her comatose in her hospital bed and surrounded by loved ones. Having never actually met her boyfriend Sebastian, Julia's family immediately assumes that Jonas is the man they've all heard so much about as of late. While Jonas is all too willing to step into the role for the time being, his ruse grows complicated when Julia awakens with amnesia, and the real Sebastian begins to grow curious about the intruder that has stolen his identity. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 44 min.
Directed By: Ole Bornedal
Genres: Drama, Art House & International, Mystery & Suspense

In Theaters: Aug 24, 2007 Wide
On DVD: May 5, 2009
Studio: Revolver Entertainment

Critic Reviews

Ty Burr, Boston Globe
It's good, nasty fun until it gets boxed in by its own contrivances toward the end.
Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle
You can see this Danish offering as a sardonic update of familiar noir material, or simply as the story of the midlife crisis of a guy who wishes -- or dreams, or dreads -- that he's living out a grand drama. There are pleasures to be had either way.
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
[Bornedal] steers his mistaken-identity story in a more generic direction.
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
I suspect anyone who went for last year's foreign-language pulp fiction of choice, Tell No One, will be rewarded by Ole Bornedal's latest.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
It's interesting that two of the best thrillers of the last several months, Tell No One and Just Another Love Story, have come from Europe.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
A creative mix of horror, noir and psychological thriller. At times the story defies logic, but viewers who can accept that will find themselves caught up in the film's intensity.
Edward Porter, Sunday Times (UK)
It's done with some style, Bornedal telling much of the story in nifty montages set to insistent music, but I couldn't get into the spirit of it.
Philip French, Observer [UK]
This engrossing Danish thriller is like the 1995 Sandra Bullock vehicle While You Were Sleeping merged with Festen and turned into a film noir.
Allan Hunter, Daily Express
You are swept along by the confidence of the storytelling even as you accept it might not hold up to close scrutiny.
Patrick Peters, Empire Magazine
High concept thriller which fails to captivate due to unsympathetic characters.
Wally Hammond, Time Out
Ambitious cross-cutting and occasional bursts of strident music hint at psychologically complex parallels and readings that the film fails to deliver.
Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
The film's best hope is black comedy - it's certainly impossible to take seriously - and yet crazy amounts of it are socked over as bombastic, overedited melodrama.
Ali Catterall, Film4
A fast, furious and fun homage to film noir with heart to spare.
David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]
Cracking along at a fast pace with a plot full of twists and turns, it's a first-rate thriller and one bound to get the Hollywood remake treatment very soon.
Derek Malcolm, This is London
It's melodrama, and sometimes absurdist. But there's a sense of humour too and while it trips over itself in the effort to be original, it is an impressive piece of film-making all the same.
Kevin Maher, Times [UK]
Bornedal's movie is slick and arresting, and proves again to Hollywood that mature genre film-making is thriving on this side of the Atlantic.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
A game but chaotic attempt at neo-noir, ferociously acted and directed.
Jonas Milk, Little White Lies
A well paced, though hardly credible, piece of noir.
Rob Daniel, Sky Movies
Nimbly weaving between mid-life crisis melodrama, noir, comedy, horror, this is Lars von Trier meets Michael Haneke and, in a good way, one of the year's most uncomfortable watches.
Neil Smith, Total Film
The grim result might stretch credibility, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining.

Read all 26 critic reviews

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Walter M

[font=Century Gothic]"Just Another Love Story" is anything but.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]After all, how many start like this: Jonas(Anders W. Berthelsen), a crime scene photographer, is dying in the middle of the street on a rainy night with… More
[font=Century Gothic]"Just Another Love Story" is anything but.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]After all, how many start like this: Jonas(Anders W. Berthelsen), a crime scene photographer, is dying in the middle of the street on a rainy night with his wife Mette(Charlotte Fich) crying over him.[/font] [font=Century Gothic]Even though the passion has lessened from their marriage, they are still happy with two children and a car that is constantly breaking down. When it breaks down again on the side of the road, it inadvertantly causes Julia(Rebecka Hemse) to spectacularly crash her car, leaving her in a coma. Feeling guilty, Jonas goes to see her at the hospital, bluffing his way into her room as her boyfriend Sebastian(Nikolaj Lie Kaas).[/font] [font=Century Gothic]That's strange. Because Julia shot Sebastian in Hanoi.[/font] [font=Century Gothic]Got that?[/font] [font=Century Gothic]"Just Another Love Story" is a neat psychological mystery with a couple of plot conveniences including Julia's blindness and a dead boyfriend. It is influenced by both Almodovar and Hitchcock with a structure that blurs reality and fantasy which is appropriate since both Julia and Jonas have their share of dreams which is how they bond in a bravura sequence that cuts back and forth between the hospital and a Saturday evening at Jonas'. Subscribing to National Geographic, Jonas dreams of traveling the world which requires not only money but the will. Julia's dreams of travel might have leaned more to the romantic, never thinking they would land her in a hospital room back in her native land of Denmark which she was trying to escape along with her family. While Jonas comes off as something of a heel(but does he deserve his fate?), he is still trying to do the right thing and be nice which is her family's fantasy of the kind of man she should be attached to. But Julia may be too much of a fighter to need any of them. [/font]