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After the Wedding

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 28 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Susanne Bier (also story)
Anders Thomas Jensen (also story)
Directed by: Susanne Bier
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 30, 2007
DVD: July 10, 2007
Running Time: 120 minutes, Color
Origin: Denmark / Sweden
Language(s): Danish / Swedish (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: R for some language and a scene of sexuality
Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Rolf Lassgård, Stine Fischer Christensen, Mona Malm, Christian Tafdrup, Frederik Gullits Ernst, and Kristian Gullits Ernst
Sweeping, yet entirely intimate, After the Wedding is a shattering portrait of a family struggling with the fragility of life and the search for connection, healing, and forgiveness. (IFC Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Brothers Open Hearts Things We Lost in the Fire
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
A highly original and unusually powerful drama that deserves comparison to the great Scandinavian films of the past.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
One of the best films to open in the Bay Area in 2007.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Talented filmmaker Susanne Bier (Brothers), armed with an outstanding compositional sense, keeps control over the storms of melodrama that swirl in this rich weepie.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A thrilling -- and harrowing, and beautiful -- celebration of the unpredictability of life.
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
What feels at first like a quiet, straightforward picture builds into one of the richest and most satisfying of the year so far, in any genre or any language.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
With a third-act twist that outdoes that initial revelation, the film turns out to be a thoughtful exploration of paternity and responsibility. Much of the film's success lies in Bier's sensitive direction, but credit is also due to the fine cast, particularly Mikkelsen.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Bier primes us for a catfight, but she gives something tastier: a feast of reconciliation and love.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
After the Wedding defies the odds: For once, the bigger the emotion, the truer the moviegoing experience.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Mikkelsen, like Jimmy Stewart, projects emotions with a slight twitch of a lip or narrowing of an eye. His long face - often handsome, sometimes plain, always cryptic - yields secrets slowly; you have to watch an entire film to know how his character feels and how you feel about him.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Bier directs with a sense of motion, pleasant without pushing. Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Jacob, is an actor who absolutely belongs on the screen, a gentler sort of Jack Palance.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Once again Bier demonstrates just how misleading appearances can be, as she artfully removes the veneers concealing the dark truths locked away by her intriguing characters.
Read Full Review >Variety Gunnar Rehlin
Thanks to a tight script, sharp direction and excellent actors, new film by Danish helmer Susanne Bier manages to be both emotional and engaging.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
After the Wedding would never pretend to have any answers, but in hands this skilled the act of exploration itself couldn't be more illuminating, or more dramatic.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Unfortunately, in Bier’s world, where even the most innocuous acts can result in emotional ruin, redemption is purgatorial in its own peculiar way.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Those willing to overlook its emotional grandstanding will find much to admire and even more to think about in this Oscar-nominated Danish drama.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
In After the Wedding Susanne Bier pushes the envelope further, toward operatic passion and the visual symbolism of Ingmar Bergman.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
After the Wedding ends up feeling far weightier than it first appears, with its plot contrivances and unlikely coincidences generating such a messy range of emotions, they end up feeling a lot like real life.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is a fine tale of families and secrets, and its seemingly cold exterior gives way to something unexpectedly warm and soft inside.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
After the Wedding is full of enough plot twists to supply a whole season of "Desperate Housewives."
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
The characters may suffer once the bride walks down the aisle, but Bier, Jensen and their first-rate cast work together like a match made in heaven.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Rob Nelson
What happens after the wedding comprises a full three-quarters of Bier's epic, whose near-Biblical twists and turns--I wouldn't think of giving them away--are enough to fill four weepies.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
A fine and, on a scene-by-scene basis, often better than fine, if effectively unadventurous work.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Jensen's dramatic structure is so visible this sometimes seems like a late Rod Serling teleplay, but Bier has proved highly adept at merging conventional drama with the immediacy of the Dogma 95 movement.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
With its soapy earnestness and use of suffering souls as set dressing, After The Wedding could be the cinematic equivalent of a Coldplay song. And while that isn't necessarily a slam, it isn't a recommendation either.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter
At two hours, After the Wedding stretches out family flux too thinly and waits too long to reveal the final, devastating secret that we already know.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Evidently, this bloated piece of Oscar-nominated nonsense was a big hit in Denmark, which makes me think there's a glittering future in that otherwise discriminating country for several seasons of "Days of Our Lives."
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 28 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Doug E gave it a10:
Extremely well done.
robert i gave it an8:
A film as fresh and unanticipated as the sky. a story that rings true, actors that don't pander, a view that seems lifelike.
Al S gave it an8:
Melodramatic but effective nonetheless.
Maria gave it a10:
This movie is perfect. Just be ready for an emotional wallop however. It surprised me in its level of emotional sophistication in scene after scene. I completely agree with the Salon reviewer!
April F. gave it an8:
A lovely movie, dramatic but not as melodramatic as some of the reviews suggest. Don't get me wrong - there's some major drama, but the characters are incredibly believable and their reactions are understandable and well-portrayed.
Jared C. gave it a0:
Boring.
Marc K. gave it a7:
A little on the long side, but definitely worth a look. As others have noted, appearances in this film can be very much deceiving. A more than worthy Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film.
