‘Queen of Hearts’ ('Dronningen') opens with a swirling shot of the Nordic woods—the camera spins dizzily before finally straightening up to pan to a woman walking her dog back to her home. Everything from here on is shot in classic, formal frames: all symmetry and reflections. It is almost as if the opening shot is the director’s way of bringing you into a world which looks normal on the surface but is all twisted underneath.
Adapted from a novel, the film tells the story of a middle-aged woman who has an illicit affair with her own stepson (played with verve by Gustav Lindh). The subject matter is so explosive as to be revolting, but director May el Toukhi eases us in, choosing to tell the story from the female protagonist’s point of view. She has a perfect life: a lawyer fighting for the rights of rape victims, mother to two sweet twin girls, a devoted, accomplished husband and a stylish home set in nature. We watch as her stepson comes to stay with the family for one summer and how her attitude towards him moves from indifference to condescension to attraction.
The writer and director do not dwell much on the motivations of this character, leaving us searching desperately for justifications. As the benign attraction turns explicitly and graphically physical, we squirm in our seats and try hard to look away. It is only as events unfold that the true horror of what we have witnessed creeps up on us, and we watch further as she expertly manipulates everyone around her to keep her facade intact.
Trine Dyrholm plays this perverse, deeply hypocritical woman with so much nuance that she invites sympathy. In so doing, we are confronted with the charisma of abusers, the power they wield over the narrative around molestation and the inability of people in their entourage to identify and confront them. That the abuser in question happens to be a woman further upends all our received ideas around sexuality. 'Queen of Hearts' is not an erotic drama but a film that raises ethical questions. It shows us exactly how grey the issue of consent is and makes us all complicit. By the end of the film the audience has been completely shown up as enablers: a devastating mirror to how such incidents play out in real life.
Genre: Drama
Language: Danish
Runtime: 2h 7min
Year of release: 2019
Streaming Platform: N/A
Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.
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