Saturday 14 January 2006

Aftermath (2004)

This Danish film deals with how a married couple handle grief when their 12-year old daughter is killed by a drunken driver.  The husband initially keeps working as an architect, but his behaviour grows more and more erratic as he daydreams about strangling the woman who was driving.  The wife, a social worker, eventually returns to her job but becomes obsessed with the baby daughter of a single mother assigned to her.  What makes this movie in the end unlikeable is where the characters go with this scenario.  The husband befriends the somewhat desperate-for-love killer until he thinks the time is ripe to reveal his true identity and the woman effectively creates a situation where the young mother could lose her child.  That they reconcile towards the end does not alter the lives of others that they may have ruined in their mourning.

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