After the Wedding

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A highly original and unusually powerful drama that deserves comparison to the great Scandinavian films of the past.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

One of the best films to open in the Bay Area in 2007.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

It's a riveting character study/soap opera.

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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Bier primes us for a catfight, but she gives something tastier: a feast of reconciliation and love.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

After the Wedding defies the odds: For once, the bigger the emotion, the truer the moviegoing experience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Time Richard Schickel

A rich, intricate and very gripping movie.

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.

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.

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.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

In After the Wedding Susanne Bier pushes the envelope further, toward operatic passion and the visual symbolism of Ingmar Bergman.

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.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

After the Wedding is full of enough plot twists to supply a whole season of "Desperate Housewives."

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.

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.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A fine and, on a scene-by-scene basis, often better than fine, if effectively unadventurous work.

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.

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.

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.

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."