As someone interested in foreign languages and translation, I like to check the original titles of international films. The Danes, I think, do it well. In the upcoming Mads Mikkelsen-led movie about drunken schoolteachers, called Another Round here, I far prefer the original Druk.
Today I am reviewing another Danish film, Madklubben, which is The Food Club on English release. Google tells me that it is a literal translation, but to this Anglo ear Madklubben sounds closer to what happens in this 99-minute movie, which is a blend of Eat Pray Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and — here I offer a general title to encompass a present artistic moment — Most If Not All Men are Bastards.
The Food Club is directed by Danish filmmaker Barbara Topsoe-Rothenborg and written by her compatriot Anne-Marie Olesen. Aside from the opening scenes, however, the film is set not in freezing Denmark but in gorgeous Puglia in southern Italy, a place where there are far more olive trees than people.
It’s that Nordic opening that sets up this geographical shift. It is Christmas Day and we meet the three 60-plus women at the centre of the story: Marie (Kirsten Olesen), Berling (Stina Ekblad) and Vanja (Kirsten Lehfeldt), who have been best friends since childhood.
Marie has been married for 44 years. She does the accounts for the company she and her husband Henrik (Peter Hesse Overgaard) run. Berling is sophisticated and single. She dresses to impress. Vanja, a former teacher, is still mourning her husband, who died eight years before. All three women have adult children.
When the Christmas presents are handed out at Marie’s, she opens the one from her husband. It is an iron. It’s hard to think of anything more thoughtless. That night he reveals he is seeing another woman.
Here we go to the heart of the film, a regrettable universal truth that does not need translation: the near invisibility of women of a certain age, or “old arses”, as the three call themselves (here the translation from Danish to English does become interesting).
The two friends rally to Marie. They convince her to use one of the gifts from her children, a ticket for two to a cooking retreat in Puglia. “Your only revenge,” Berling tells her, “is to have as long and good life as possible.” They buy an extra ticket and all three head to the Italian boot.
So we have three women who, on the surface, fit certain moulds. The dutiful, conservative Marie, the rebellious, sensuous Berling and the hippyish Vanya.
As they walk into the farmhouse hosting the cooking course, Berling comes on to the handsome young Italian owner-chef-teacher, Alessandro (Michele Venitucci). Then she smokes dope. Marie repeatedly texts her husband but receives no reply. Vanja makes video calls to her beloved dog.
The other guests are a young couple (Rasmus Botoft and Mia Lyhne) who are on a health kick — “No pasta for us!’’ they declare, which I believe is a deportable offence throughout Italy — and a divorced, 50-something landscape gardener named Jacob (Troels Lyby).
Jacob shows interest in Vanya, but she still loves her husband. Her friends suggest that “there might be room for two Mr Rights in one’s life”.
When Marie rethinks her life she casts an eye at Jacob, who seems like a decent bloke but is no Paul Newman.
The more we learn about the three women, the more they break out of the mould, if it ever existed. Each reveals herself to be more than what can be seen on the surface. Each one is at a turning point in life. As a result, their friendship is tested.
While Marie, devastated by her husband’s betrayal, is the central character, the one who grew on me is Berling. When eventually she is honest about herself, it is a poignant moment that perhaps sums up what this movie is about. She, of each of the three, is the one doing whatever she can not to become invisible.
Ekblad is a Finnish-Swedish actress. She was the mysterious, androgynous Ismael in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) and, more recently, was in the Swedish TV series Wallander. She brings a brittleness, a fragility, to Berling’s insouciance and toughness.
The Food Club is the first release of a new Sydney-based, globally-minded film content distributor, Reset Collective. It’s good to see another independent player on the scene.
This movie does have its humorous moments — such as when Marie and Vanja find Berling’s vibrator and try to work out how it, well, fits — but I’d say it’s drama-comedy rather than comedy-drama. There are some Hallmark moments, and an overuse of the Italian song Funiculi, Funicula, but the performances are strong and deep down this movie is about something that matters. Plus the scenery in Puglia is beautiful.
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Escape From Extinction (PG)
Selected cinemas from February 11
★★★
E scape From Extinction, narrated by the great Helen Mirren, is the debut documentary produced by animal welfare group American Humane, which was founded in 1877.
The peg for the project is a 2019 UN report that warned the planet was facing its sixth mass extinction, with one million animal and plant species at risk of being wiped out.
The 99-minute movie, directed by Matthew R. Brady, details this threat in a straightforward manner. The opening shot is of Australia’s 2019-20 bushfires. Then there are images of animals that have become extinct, from the dodo to the Tasmanian tiger, and of ones that are threatened with extinction.
The Sumatran rhinoceros, to take one example, has a population of about 30. You can check any animal for yourself on the grimly informative International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species (iucnredlist.org).
The causes are the familiar ones: human domination of the planet, global warming, deforestation, pollution, especially by plastic, and the illegal wildlife trade. The photos of tiger cubs squeezed into suitcases are difficult to look at.
At this point the movie is not unlike David Attenborough’s new one, A Life on Our Planet. And, like Attenborough, American Humane does not think all hope is lost.
Yet its main anti-extinction plan angers animal rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Animal Humane certifies zoos and aquariums and believes “good zoos”, which work in conservation, are the “ark against the sixth extinction”.
We then see a list of animals saved by zoologists, such as the bald eagle (19,000 alive now, compared with 800 in 1963). There are interviews with senior people from zoos and aquariums around the world. I do not doubt that such people are passionate about animal welfare and do important work to rescue wild animals (at oil spills, for example) and, when possible, return them to their native habitats.
As a documentary, though, this one could be more balanced. The animal rights activists who disagree with American Humane do not receive enough airtime.
Nor is it right to celebrate William Hornaday (1854-1937), founder of what is now the Bronx Zoo, as a rescuer of the bison (which he was) without mentioning that in 1906 he displayed Ota Benga, a man from the Congo, in the monkey house (which he did).
Even with such criticisms, this is a movie about one of the most important issues of our lifetime. I am sure the zoologists interviewed would prefer all animals to live in the wild. My fear is we will end up with their fallback option and the only place we will see a living polar bear will be in a zoo.
This gorgeously pulpy show flips the script on Trump’s ‘bad hombres’
The action-packed The Gringo Hunters, set in Baja California, follows a Mexican police unit capturing American fugitives.
The Friend review — Divine portrayal of the human-animal bond
This adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s bestselling 2018 novel, about a woman who befriends a Great Dane in the aftermath of her best friend’s suicide, is tender-hearted and thoughtful.
The Food Club (M)
Selected cinemas
★★★