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The Art Of Crying - Peter Schønau Fog |
According to 11-year-old Allan, he comes from a happy, normal family – that is when his father isn’t bursting into tears in the middle of the night threatening to kill himself, which we quickly come to understand is a regular occurrence. So regular, in fact, that the rest of the family simply ignores it, except for Allan who shows a touching yet childishly naïve and ultimately misguided concern for his father’s desperate crying jags. The only thing that can calm the father down so things can return to normal is for Allan’s older sister Sanne to spend the night with him and “comfort” him. Too young to understand what that entails, Allan urges his sister to go to him, which she does with an apathetic detachment. Yet seen through the untainted eyes of a young boy focused on relieving the suffering of his father, these events are depicted with an endearing, almost comical innocence devoid of condemnation. When the sister finally refuses to comfort her father anymore, it is left to Allan to find a way to raise his father’s spirits. But the only time the father, normally a timorous bundle of injured pride and self-loathing, is truly happy and manages to rise in the esteem of others, is when he is giving one of his famously moving funeral eulogies. So, Allan resolves to do what he can to provide his father with more funerals at which to shine, starting with his sickly aunt Didde. Deprived of his daughter’s “comfort”, the father becomes intensely jealous of Sanne’s boyfriend and enlists Allan’s help in keeping an eye on her. When Allan can provide him with no grounds for paternal suspicion, the father has the boyfriend arrested on trumped up charges of statutory rape. This is the last straw for Sanne. Taking a leaf from Allan’s book, she locks her grandmother inside her house and sets fire to it to get back at her father, for which she is sent away to a psychiatric hospital. This sets off another one of the father’s nighttime bouts of depression as he fears what she might say. With Sanne no longer around to comfort the father, Allan takes her place with him on the sofa. As Allan gradually comes to realize what his father’s behavior did to Sanne, he resolves to make sure she never has to be subject to it again by traveling to the hospital to ask them not to send her home, and revealing the truth about his father. As the police start their investigation into Allan’s revelations about Sanna, the father’s world comes crumbling down. He makes his first proper attempt at suicide, but only after making sure that Allan has seen his preparations and is equipped to save him. While the father is recovering in hospital, Allan enjoys a blissful time of happy calm alone at home with his mother. And that time is set to continue as the father is sent off to prison as soon as he is well enough. As Allan puts it, every cloud has a silver lining. Cast Jannik Lorenzen
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Allan |
Original Title: Kunsten at græde i kor
The Art Of Crying