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Love Is All You Need/Den Skaldede Frisør (2012) - Bier's broad, Italy-set romcom



+ Best Danish Movie of the Year

A delicious poster for Susanne Bier's Love Is All You Need


We meet the hairdresser with breast cancer, who is now cured, and whose daughter is getting married in Italy. Her husband Leif is banging a younger 'model', and even bring this woman down there with him, while our heroine falls for the groom's father.
Great Danish director Susanne Bier (Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)), who won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for her In a Better World (2010) (not one of her best), here returns to the genre that catapulted her career upwards with Den Eneste Ene (1999), the romcom: Trine Dyrholm (A Royal Affair (2012)) and Pierce Brosnan (The Ghost Writer (2010)) are both charming apart and together and add credence to an otherwise contrived affair. Kim Bodnia is also a joy as Dyrholm's insensitive, egotistical husband.
Cinematographer Morten Søborg (Pusher II (2004)) wrings all the possible postcard beauty out of the Southern Italy setting that could possibly be imagined, and the film is dressed to the nines with wedding-dressed stars.
The script by Anders Thomas Jensen (The Salvation (2014)) and Bier, goes big and unfortunately becomes a bit taxing despite the genuinely funny moments: The blond young mistress is too stupid (even asking Dyrholm to cut her hair before her daughter's wedding (...)); the mean sister-in-law (Paprika Steen) is also too much, and most of the romance is fairly predictable. Everyone have to find their mate in this neatly conceived but not altogether successful, well-meant piece of guilty pleasure.
The original, Danish title translates to, the bald hairdresser.

Related posts:

Susanne Bier: 2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess  
Brothers/Brødre (2004) or, A Woman Came Between Them


In Spanish, Susanne Bier's Amor Es Todo Lo Que Necesitas -- indeed

Budget: 7.1 mil. $
Box office: 16.7 mil. $
= Minor flop

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