Considering that he co-founded the Dogme movement, and made the best of its films, in “Festen” (or “The Celebration“), a picture that’s proved highly influential across the last decade-and-a-half or so (David Fincher seems to be a fan, as there are certainly echoes of the film in the trailer for “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo“), it’s disappointing that Thomas Vinterberg‘s career has proceeded in fits and starts ever since. It took him five years to follow-up “Festen,” and that sophomore picture, the ambitious, but misshapen “It’s All About Love,” with Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes and Sean Penn, was critically slaughtered, while the Lars Von Trier-penned “Dear Wendy” didn’t fare much better.
Things are looking hopeful, however; Vinterberg’s “Submarino” was something of a return to form, and Screen Daily bring news that the director is teaming up with Danish cinema’s best-known leading man, Mads Mikkelsen, for a promising-sounding drama called “The Hunt.” Written by Vinterberg and “Submarino” co-writer Tobias Lindholm, it will star Mikkelsen is a recent divorcé in a small rural town, who’s accused of abusing a small child. Echoes of “M“?
The cast also includes Susse Wold, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe and Anne Louise Hassing, and the film, budgeted at about $3.8 million, starts shooting Friday in Denmark, for a late-2012 release. We’re pretty excited that Mikkelsen and Vinterberg are teaming up, especially with such dramatic-sounding material, and we’re hopeful that this’ll mark the director’s return to the brilliance of his debut.
