05/09/2005

After winning the Camera d’or at Cannes in 2003 for his debut film Reconstruction, Danish helmer Christoffer Boe presented his follow-up Allegro at the Venice Days on Saturday. A low-tech, contemporary science fiction story that was made with the same crew as his debut, Allegro’s heightened visual style reminds one of Reconstruction as does its renewed preoccupation with themes such as place, memory, love and trust. They give us more insight in the promising world of Boe as a young European author.

Allegro tells the story of a pianist (Ulrich Thomsen), who returns to a city from which he fled ten years previously. He remembers only his years in exile until a man (Henning Moritzen –Thomsen’s co-star from Festen) contacts him to explain that his suppressed memory can be found in the ‘Zone’, a hermetically sealed off section of the city. At the heart of his quest to have his memory restored is his former relationship with Andrea, played with relish by Helena Christensen in her debut.

Less ambiguous in its message than his first film, Boe succeeds again in telling a captivating story about the emotions that connect us all. A new addition is Allegro’s musical theme, which came from Boe’s desire to create obstacles for himself: "I don’t like film music," the director confesses, "So obviously I made a movie about music". Despite not being a musical expert, Boe himself selected the classical pieces, the majority of them by Bach.
The common ground of Allegro and Reconstruction notwithstanding, Boe does not want his name to become synonymous with their shared styles and existential themes. "Those are [the kind of] films that I like," explains the director about his first two works. "But my next project will be exactly the opposite. It is about buying groceries".

Allegro was produced by Tine Grew Pfeiffer for Alphaville Production and will be released domestically by SF Film on 30 September. International sales are handled by Celluloïd Dreams.