11/07/2005

Belgian avant-première for Jacob Thuesen's Accused in the Brussels European Film Festival. The film, which screened in the last Berlinale and which will be distributed in Belgium by Lumière on September 21st, is a well made piece of work that manages to efficiently deal with the delicate subject of paedophilia.

After the documentary Under New York (1996) and the short film Livsforsikringen (2003), Thuesen, who also edited Lars Von Trier and Susanne Bier's films, makes a first feature in which a 14 year old girl accuses her father of sexual abuse. The drama and tension grow during and after the process but the plot is not legally oriented. Kim Fupz Aakeson's has the good taste to focus on the characters relationships, building their personalities in a way which allows us to view their evolution and contradictions. The dialogues' intensity allows the actors to explore all the possible emotions in such a situation.
With a clean aesthetic (amazing photography by Sebastian Blenkov), the omnipresence of the colour blue (swimming-pool, clothes, the father's eyes) gives the film a fake calmness juxtaposed with the emotional chaos of the characters.

Produced by Thomas Heinesen for Nordisk Film, Accused was coproduced by TV2 Danmark with the support of the DFI - Danish Film Institute.