Prague

Aroview: A journey to Prague to collect a deceased father's coffin turns into a prolonged, poignant and gruelling dissection of an estranged Danish couple's faltering marriage.

With their own lack of mutual understanding mirrored by a series of cross-cultural communication breakdowns, an emotionally inert husband and his exasperated wife confront each other's secrets and shortcomings in an uncertain atmosphere of guilt, betrayal and separation anxiety. Echoing the uncomfortably intimate character studies of Bergman and Cassavetes, the chilly tension - offset by brief touches of black humour and unexpected warmth - is played to perfection by Mikkelsen and Stengade, both projecting the necessary nuances of restraint and indignation. An unsatisfactory conclusion is the only mis-step in an otherwise incisive examination of identity, dislocation and communication.