ElijahCSkuggs
Accomplished actor Nicholas Bro wants to make a movie. He asks his friend and director Christopher Boe for his help, and being the good guy Boe is, he gives him a camera and the essentials to start his film. Bro's (not Boe) idea is to shoot a love-story involving himself and his wife. I forget specifics at the moment, but I think it was an attempt on his part to fix his struggling relationship. Well, it backfires, and the basis of the movie is Nicholas attempting to finish his movie, thus showing his wife how much he loves her, and ultimately getting her back. The results are nothing less than eye-opening.This is my first peek into a Christopher Boe film and I must say I'm very impressed. I've heard he's one of the world's leading young directors and I can easily back that statement. Before I gush over Boe anymore, I do have to also commend Nicholas's performance as well. It was really something else, and almost at times, felt too realistic. Getting back to Boe, and it's related to Nicholas in a way, the reason why I was so sucked into this film was because of the realism. The ideas and writing for Bro's character hooked me in on a level that screamed real life tragedy.What real life tragedy? What kind of tragedy? As the climax of the movie began I was almost immediately reminded of the movie, The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez. It was a graphic, tragic and a very emotional real-life film that displayed mental problems on a level I've never seen before. I never in my life would have thought I would see a movie that would create a comparable feeling that that film gave off. But it did, and I applaud them for doing so.
Steve Schonberger
Nicolas Bro is an obsessive actor. His marriage to Lene Maria Christensen is in trouble; she's fallen out of love with him. Instead of a normal approach, such as couples counseling, he decides to make a love story film, starring him and his wife. He borrows a camera from director Christoffer Boe (also the film's real-life director) and starts recording everything. His obsessive recording further alienates Lene, and gradually drives away all of his friends, even Boe.MILD SPOILERS:Eventually, Lene flees to Berlin, asking her friends to keep her new address secret. This drives Nicolas even deeper into obsessive madness. His in-laws (Karen Margrethe Bjerre and Niels Weyde) try to talk sense into him, expressing concern, but he just hassles them for her address.A friend from his stage-theater group takes his tapes, because he's recorded stuff some of them consider private. She offers to return them on condition that he sign a statement that he won't release them in public. He wants them back unconditionally, and they argue. (I'm not sure how that argument resolved, or whether it's before or after Lene's departure to Berlin.) He recruits Trine Dyrholm to play his wife so he can finish his film project, but they have creative differences that derail that effort.With the help of Lene's credit card bill, which arrives at their home address (presumably because she forgets to get new credit cards with a different billing address), Nicolas figures out where she is in Berlin. He goes there, and tracks her down. He spies on her, discovering she has a new boyfriend. He approaches her, and after she excuses herself from her friends she takes him to her hotel room to talk some sense into him. They talk late into the night. When Nicolas finally dozes off, she records a goodbye message with his camera, and takes it away from him in hopes that he'll finally quit filming everything.BIG SPOILERS:Instead of abandoning the project, Nicolas moves to a cheaper apartment, and sells his comic book collection to pay for a new hand-held camera and a set of surveillance cameras he installs in every room of the apartment. He meets a woman at a bar (I think Trine, since I assume Lene was still in Berlin) and when they go for a walk he knocks her out with a baseball bat. He drags her to the new apartment, where she regains consciousness, and fights her way free of him.He heads for a bar and gets roaring drunk, boasting about the beating and complaining about how she fought her way free. Apparently the other idiots in the bar think he's full of crap, rather than confessing a crime, because they don't do anything.Before word about the beating spreads, he meets another woman (I think a friend from his old stage-theater company), and invites her to another bar, where he gets even more drunk. Concerned for his safety, she escorts him back to the new apartment. She comments on the cameras, then observes the plastic all over the apartment, and speculates that he's renovating. No such luck – he beats her bloody with a broken-off table leg. She doesn't wake up. He positions her in various poses for his cameras, as if she were his long-lost wife.Word of the first beating apparently gets around, and a bunch of guys go looking for Nicolas. He slips out of his apartment just in time, and evades them, but they discover the bloodied woman there. They track him down and start beating. Someone grabs his camera to record the beating, as if finishing his film. The film concludes as he sits unconscious, with squirts of arterial blood indicating his dwindling pulse.END SPOILERS.Cheerful music plays over the end credits.Most of the cast of this film play characters with the same name as the cast members themselves. IMDb credits them as "Himself" and "Herself", and although the characters resemble the cast members in some respects they're not really playing _themselves_. For example, Nicolas is an actor in real life, and collects comic books, but as far as I'm aware he's neither insane nor married to Lene Maria Christensen. The characters would best be credited as "fictionalized himself" and "fictionalized herself".Nicolas Bro is very good as nut-job Nicolas. Trine Dyrholm is also very good. In fact, most of the acting is solid, with the exception of Christoffer Boe, who is lackluster at acting.The directing, by Christoffer Boe, also isn't bad. The camera work plays well with the movie's premise of an actor obsessively filming himself. The hand-held shots are shaky enough to fit the premise, but steady enough to present the story. The static-camera shots are framed imperfectly enough to fit the premise, but again well enough to present the story. The scenes are assembled in a way that gets the idea across well enough.But the admirable acting and good directing go to waste.The critical problem with the film is the story, written by the director and Knud Romer Jørgensen. Once we've seen Nicolas fail to revitalize his marriage to Lene, then alienate her and his friend with his obsessive recording, that plot direction runs stale and turns repetitious. His attempt to rescue his project with Trine is a decent change of direction. His trip to Berlin would have made a good conclusion, given how Lene handled him there. Had it ended at that point, I could have given the film a rating of 6.Unfortunately, the writers didn't think that was enough for a feature film project, or maybe they just couldn't figure out a good closing scene to wrap up after Berlin. Instead, they continued in a direction that felt like it was meant more for stupid and offensive shock value, ruining an already-shaky film.
aquasock
I just returned from Sundance, where I saw this film. While I can appreciate the excellent acting, creativity behind the shooting style, and script in general, I find it difficult to find any other merit in 'Offscreen.' The first half was extremely slow...and the only thing holding my interest was the hope that the film was actually going somewhere. Clinging to the thought that character development would bring about salvation, I stayed, even though there were a number of people who actually walked out of the theatre (fairly uncommon at Sundance). Finally, the film did go somewhere...unfortunately, it was to a place far too disturbing to even believe, and with this new twist, even more people left. I value originality, creativity, and filmmakers who have the boldness to push the envelope, however 'Offscreen' was boring when not following a path of cheap thrills, and downright ridiculous in its attempts to shock.
