Lulu

Lulu is not Henrik's wife, but David wasn't meant to be at the house. From a notionally simple scenario Caroline Sascha Cogez has built a beautiful wander through borderlands emotional, societal, phsyical.

Malin Crepin's Lulu is an art expert, accompanying Jens Jorn Spottag to his villa in the Rhone Alps. It's ostensibly a business trip, when Henrik's wife finds out she's there to "help buy art for the new hotel". She finds out because David, as charming as he is troubled in a convincing portrayal by Andreas Holm Dittmer, has told her. David has left his nearby boarding school, and those circumstances are as complex as everything else.

With a crisply shot, painterly landscapes of lakes (including Geneva), the film sails smoothly from bucolic boating to a dinner of escalating tensions.

This is beautifully executed, acted, composed - Jakob Garfield-Havsteen's sound design helps construct a sense of intimacy, breathing, ice in glasses all contributing to an intense proximity. There's a sense of Europe in the 'Grand Tour' era, part of an uneasy timelessness, money and privilege as much an artifact of a previous era as lakeside pianos and landline telephones. The story too is of no particular era, but no less strong for it. Cogez directs, co-wrote with Tony Mygind Rostboll, and has created something charming.