As more and more works appear about sexual assault amongst teens, it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint films that handle the topic with an equal emphasis on gravity, nuance and urgency. What Lies Between Us by Amalie Næsby Fick – the Danish director’s live-action feature debut – does a fine job of getting us close to this trifecta while also floating freely as a work of entertainment. Co-written by Nikolaj Arcel and Sara Isabella Jønsson, and adapted from a book of the same Danish name (Dobbeltfejl, lit. “double fault” in tennis terms) by Anne Mette Kirk, the movie has had its world premiere in Toronto’s Discovery strand.

What Lies Between Us takes us deep into the lives of three pairs of mothers and sons: local realtor Anne Sofie (Sidse Babett Knudsen) – aka Anso – and her 14-year-old son, Frederik (Victor Harrison); younger mother Ulrikke (Swedish-Danish thesp Asta Kamma August, who previously starred in Sex) and new-kid-in-town tennis phenomenon Niels Christian, aka NC (Julian Brix); and Anso’s close friend Sarah (Sofie Gråbøl) and her socially awkward early teen Oskar (August Mjelva-Aaen). After Oskar accuses the other two of sexual assault during a nighttime hang, Anso is determined to untangle her son’s seemingly innocent role from that of NC, who has a past record of insubordinate behaviour.

Fick now creates something wildly different from her last works, the 2022 children’s animation Little Allan – The Human Antenna and the six-part drama miniseries Sex. What Lies Between Us draws from perspectives and themes we’ve seen in other works, including Suzie Miller’s stage play Inter Alia – which follows a judge’s struggle between her sense of justice and her desire to protect her child – and the Netflix series Adolescence, getting at the toxic depths of the manosphere in the minds of teenage boys.

Even though we’ve seen this story more than once before, the director deals a real gut punch in her execution of this tale, complete with full-fledged world-building. For instance, the movie builds in subtleties of how the community’s men represent patriarchal complicity: careless school headmaster Kaufmann (Thomas Hwan); Anso’s highly disengaged husband, Morten (Trond Espen Seim); dismissive young tennis coach Sebastian (Lasse Steen Jensen); and Oskar’s absent father, Torben (Peder Thomas Pedersen).

César Award winner (for her role in Courted) Knudsen gives an absolute master class of a performance, flexing her ability to play a complex matriarch that we can’t seem to take our eyes off of – even when she uncomfortably toes the line to protect her son. We learn the truth in real time along with Anso in a series of horrifying turns, affording Knudsen the ability to act, in a way, as a sort of creatively unreliable narrator. Yet, the reveals feel refreshingly divorced from an attempt at shock value – no moments made for dramatic irony, allowing for an impeccably crafted first half of the film’s running time.

The second half never reaches the riveting psychological complexity of the first half and uses its embedded tennis through-line as a way to symbolically work through ethical turns. However, a combination of slick cinematography by Charlotte Bruus Christensen, handheld moments attuned to the film’s smallest emotional twitches and fast-paced editing – particularly in its rapid-fire tennis sequences – by My Thordal gives the movie the oomph it needs to succeed as a thriller and psychological drama accessible for all audiences.

What Lies Between Us is a Danish-Swedish-German production staged by Zentropa Entertainments in co-production with Film i Väst, Zentropa Sweden, Zentropa Berlin and Klinkerfilm. TrustNordisk holds the rights to its world sales.