World-premiering at the 53rd Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, the Swedish comedy-drama The Dance Club could well be a poster child for a certain style of contemporary Nordic cinema, delicately balancing levity with darkness as well as arthouse with more popular fare. That blend is also highly representative of the film’s writer-director Lisa Langseth, as seen in her output thus far, consisting of three features, among them Pure [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film] and Hotell [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], plus a series, Love & Anarchy [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Gizem Erdogan
interview : Lisa Langseth
fiche série]. While a touch of Lars von Trier-like mischief can regularly be detected, she does show a bit more decorum, and arguably a tad more tenderness towards her characters.

Langseth’s fourth feature also shares a kinship with the aforementioned Hotell, where participants in a therapy group took things into their own hands, and went out and feigned entirely new identities in order to “check out” of their own persona and problems. This concept partly reoccurs in The Dance Club, set in the psychotherapy industry, a profit-driven machine where patients are counted and collected by the day and by the dollar. “The region pays us per examination,” explains the ever-calculating Charlotte, head psychologist and CEO at Care Health Central, downtown Stockholm, where pills are prescribed like popcorn. “Don’t you look at underlying issues, like trauma or social stress?” enquires Johannes, the idealistic Psychology student on an internship. Only to be lectured that, here, one doesn’t treat the cause, only the symptom – about which the pharma companies are utterly euphoric and provide free lunches whenever they’re in the neighbourhood.

Some patients, however, remain frustrated, like Rakel, a performance artist whose creativity is all but drained by psychopharmaceuticals. Or Markus, the suave real-estate agent who burst into tears during a property viewing. There’s Rose, all fixed up via elaborate cosmetic surgery, who still fears her inner ugliness will come out, and Emily, thoroughly miserable and distraught about the future of this planet. Very probably, they’re all lonely as well. Until, thanks in no small part to Rakel’s creativity and Johannes’ idealism, a guerrilla group is formed: a dance club, channelling all sorts of frustrations through tripping the light fantastic, publicly and very physically. While there’s a significant boost to quality of life among the “club members”, this does not sit well with the top brass at Care Health Central, not one bit.

At times, The Dance Club also recalls Lone Scherfig’s Italian for Beginners, both in the portrayal of some very wayward individuals coming together as a whole and in its finely hand-picked ensemble: Nils Wetterholm (Young Royals) as Johannes, Alva Bratt (Eagles) as Rakel, Matias Varela (Easy Money [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]) as Markus, stand-up comedian Evelyn Mok as Emily and reality-show celebrity Julia Franzén as Rose all shine here. Charlotte is given a frosty grandeur by Pernilla August, who seems to have a whale of a time. Langseth also injects some scathing criticism into the feel-good mood of things, exposing the handling of human frailty as being not unlike an endless assembly line – very lucrative to some, pure purgatory for others.

The Dance Club was produced by Meta Film Stockholm. Its sales are overseen by REinvent.