Stars: 4 out of 5.
Wanky applause at end of film: 4 out of 5.

Now that I am the Sydney GrodsCorp correspondent, I feel it my duty to do a few reviews of the films I am seeing in the Sydney Film Festival.

I just saw “After the Wedding,” the latest offering by Danish director Susanne Bier (who made Brothers a few years ago, a very taut and compelling film). “After the Wedding” was about the difficulties of balancing personal and global responsibilities and the power dynamics between two men from very different backgrounds but with a lot of character traits in common despite that. Jorgen, a rich Danish businessman, offers Jacob, an aid worker in India, a huge donation which will guarantee the future of his orphanage, on the condition that Jacob give up India and remain in Denmark. The reasons for this perverse demand become clear as the drama of the film unfolds, with some great plot twists drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into the family lives of the two men and unravelling the viewer’s first impressions of both the main characters, obscuring the black and white notions of which one is “good” and which one is in the “right.”

I enjoyed the film, which generally strike a balance between melodrama and humour, and delivered a very interesting ethical dilemma which still has me ruminating. I personally didn’t agree with the film’s resolution, and sometimes the melodrama irritated me (my tolerance levels are not very high for that sort of thing) but it’s still a very good film. I think “Brothers” was a better film, but “After the Wedding” is also very good and worth catching if/when it comes to SBS.

As a larger aside, I am enjoying the various foreign films delivering up ethical questions this year, and wonder if it is more than coincidence but perhaps a trend reflecting the times that such films are coming up on the global stage – The Lives of Others (which won best foreign film at the Oscars), Pan’s Labyrinth and now After the Wedding (which was also nominated for Best Foreign Film).