TWIST & SHOUT Movie Review

Hab Og Karlighed

Before embarking on the massive project that would become the prize-winning Pelle the Conqueror, Danish filmmaker Bille August directed this beguiling coming-of-age story set in the Beatles-saturated Denmark of 1963. Bjorn (Adam Tonsberg) is a drummer whose romance with the lovely Anna (Camilla Søeberg) results in her pregnancy, while Erik (Lars Simonsen), in an effort to deal with a strict father and a seriously depressed mother, struggles to become the stabilizing force in his troubled home. August handles all of this with a refreshing minimum of cliches; while the situations these young people find themselves in are always familiar, the sensitivity with which they're handled makes being a teenager seem like undiscovered country. (The film is a sequel—though self-contained—to August's Zappa, which was not about Frank.)

NEXT STOP … Zappa, Murmur of the Heart, Time Stands Still

1984 (R) 107m/C DK Lars Simonsen, Adam Tonsberg, Ulrikke Juul Bondo, Camilla Soeberg; D: Bille August; W: Bille August; C: Jan Weincke, Aldo G.R. Aldo Graziatti. VHS NO