Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt/Älskar Dig För Evigt)

This bittersweet exploration of the emotional collapse of two families due to a horrible accident is raw, gritty, heartbreaking and truly shattering, and I highly recommend it - although it's not at all easy to sit through.Multiple viewings only make this film stronger, and no one walks away from the horrible wreckage of these two breakups unscarred. Nicholaj Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkelsen (a terrific duo) play a young man paralized in a car accident and a doctor who is partially resposible for his fate - his spouse was driving the other car. As the stress of the painful situation causes everyone to emotionally and physically fall apart - noone is truly innocent or completely guilty in this tragedy - the levels of abuse and denial inflicted upon the various members of the two families is gut wrenching and truthful, whether the actions come through shock, thoughtless dependence or neediness manifested as passion. Mads Mikkelsens' face in the penultimate scene is dazzlingly moving - as in a split second - he contemplates what he has done and what he is left with, in the wake of passion and loss.This Danish film is unafraid to show characters without glamour and to explore a story with no easy heros and victims. I dare the viewer to watch this film and NOT want to shout at the screen at certain points - to warn/to cajole/to rebute/to scream. This is a very painful and very great film - one best for adults due to some nudity and vicious emotional behaviour.If you enjoy Dogma films, if you look for Mads Mikkelsen or Nicholaj Lie Kaas in films, if you want a film that will challenge you and possibly break your heart - you will want to see this one!

I had seen this several years ago but plan to use ideas in course and wanted to see it again. I was shocked y how much it affected me. I am working in Prisoner's dilemma in movies and this presents 4 people's choices that you can look as as dilemma that all affect each other. It demonstrates the human condition as complicated dilemma.

This is a touching story of how quickly life can be altered forever, from an impending wedding which will never happen to a happy family being broken up. It touches on real-life issues that many people face nowadays. A good watch.

Mads Mikkelsen's performance is some of the best acting I have ever seen. Amazing movie, I usually don't watch emotional dramas, but Open Hearts is so much more. It was so real with out being overly gritty and not at all contrived. I almost have to remind myself that I just watched a movie and not a chunk of someone's actual life.

Any movie with Mads Mikkelsen is great. This film was hard to watch at times, because it dealt with the breaking apart of a family. The acting was excellent, and the story itself was well written. It was a great film!

In the passionate, and passionately executed Danish movie "The Royal Affair," also starring Mads Mikkelsen, the extra-marital affair between the doctor and the queen is, in truth, an innocent and brave love, crushed by the overwhelming might of the king and the Danish royal court. The love affair is innocent for the following reasons: the marriage between the Danish king and the British queen is arranged, as it used to be among royalty in Europe. Once the young queen sees the strange and offensive behavior of the Danish king, a spoiled young man who had never managed to grow up, she is deeply disappointed and begins to hate him, although she decides to bear her fate with dignity. When the German doctor (Mads) arrives, she finds out that he is a kindred soul, sharing her enlightenment ideas. The two are strongly drawn to each other, not only by sexual passion, but also by intellectual, political, and emotional affinities. Although the queen is superficially unfaithful to the king, she does not, in my view, betray him. Her marriage to him was forced upon her, without her say or choice, and his abusive behavior frustrates her well-meaning efforts to draw him closer to her. Where there is no love, there is no betrayal.This is not the case with Open Hearts, unfortunately. (Spoilers) The movie opens with a tragic accident, which could lead to a rich, deep, and thoughtful movie, but it doesn't. A young engaged couple, madly in love, are driving along the street. They stop to let off the young man, who is going on a hiking trip before he marries his fiancee. As he gets out of the car, he is hit by a passing car and rushed to the hospital. The verdict is grim: as the fall shattered his spine, he will not be able to move any limb from the neck down--for ever. We feel compassion for the victims, who must pay an unfathomable price for an ordinary mistake. We pity the young woman who visits her fiance in the hospital every day, the whole day, trying desperately to convince him that they could overcome the injury and share some kind of life together. The man responds to her plea with unmitigated, and sometimes sadistic, anger. Filled with self-pity, he rejects her approaches and orders her not to see him again. (Couldn't he be a bit nicer?) She is crushed.This opening is very promising. However, what happens next reduces the film to melodrama. Mads Mikkelsen plays one of the doctors in charge of the injured young man. (It was his wife's car, incidentally, that hit the young man.) In her panic, the young woman turns to him for support and comfort. We are also obliquely informed that his sexual relationships with his wife have vanished long before. Why, we are not told. Is it just a weakening of the sexual flame between long-married partners, or is there a deeper conflict, or hostility, between the two? Well, one can see where this goes. The comfort the doctor offers the distraught and attractive young woman quickly develops into a lustful affair. All right, I understand, perhaps, why the doctor needs sex. But doesn't he know that he is taking advantage of a wounded and vulnerable woman? And why would the young woman, who hasn't had the chance to digest what has happened to her, and who surely still loves her injured fiance, why would she leap so quickly into the arms of another man (even if he is the handsome Mads Mikkelsen)? This makes no sense to me. What is the value of her love for her fiance if she so quickly plunges into an affair with his doctor? Where are her inner conflicts? She seems to have none. Where is her self-respect? Where are her attempts to stand up, on her own, to the "whips and scorns of time," as Hamlet would put it? And even if she pleads for the doctor's support, must it lead to an affair? I just don't understand why it is so easy for the doctor and the young woman to engage in such a light-headed affair so soon after the accident. Was the director more concerned with the sensational possibilities that the movie offered her rather than with the psychological truths of the characters? If fact, the only dignified character in this movie is the doctor's wife, who is also an excellent actor. At first, she feels guilty about inadvertently hitting the young man with her car and therefore encourages her husband's offers of solace to the young woman. But when she finds out about the affair, she is the one who tells him the truth about his weak and miserable self and thus presents the only moral point of view in the movie. However, she loses. The doctor insists that he is in love with the young woman and escapes his home and his children. Back and forth they go, and the ending is ambiguous.Finally, Hemingway's advice to writers is applicable to all artists. During Hemingway's conversation with Scott Fitzgerald, the writer of The Great Gatsby described how he changed his short stories for submission, "knowing exactly how he must make the twists that made them into salable magazine stories." Hemingway is shocked by this betrayal of art and says he "did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent" (Ernest Hemingawy, A moveable Feast, 153). Hemingway's is a sterling counsel to the rising stars and directors of the new and often riveting Danish movies.

The move itself is very good, It does not have English subtitles, I had to gather my "nonexistent" knowledge of Spanish and Norwegian to understand the movie.

The subtitles r in Spanish. I wasn't paying attention when I purchased it. Finally bought one with English subtitles, it's a really great movie.

Es una película maravillosa. Estaría muy bien con subtítulos en español

Magnifique Mads MikkelsonQuel acteur !Rien que pour sa performance le film vaut la peine d être vu ..... ainsi que tous les autres films dans lesquels il joueBelle histoire et une " prise sur le vif " car tourné comme une vidéo en temps réel

Dieser Film ist ein Muss für Fans von Mads Mikkelsen! Gerade für die weiblichen. Und das nicht nur, weil es endlich mal eine einigermaßen freizügige Sexszene gibt, sondern auch, weil er schauspielerisch das ganze Repertoire an mimischer Kunst bietet. Wie wahrscheinlich bekannt, geht es im Prinzip darum, dass ein verheirateter Mann mit Kindern seine Frau betrügt, weil er sich ganz einfach in eine Jüngere verliebt (die ihn aber eigentlich unbewusst auch nur als Ersatz braucht, da ihr eigentlicher Freund nach einem Unfall gelähmt ist). Da rutscht man im Verlauf des Films von einer emotionalen Szene in die andere. Er gesteht ihr seine Liebe (nicht nur mit heißen Küssen ;-) ) und gesteht aber auch seiner Frau irgendwann nach vielen Lügen in einer nervenaufreibenden Szene die Affäre (und die Schauspielerin, die die Ehefrau spielt, kann auch ganz hervorragend ausrasten), ist hin und hergerissen, um dann wieder dem Verlangen zu verfallen. Ach ja, Mädels... wenn ihr auf Mads steht, müsst ihr euch den Film sowieso zulegen (auch wenn er an manchen Stellen aufgrund der bekannten skandinavischen psychedelischen Tristesse etwas unbequem zu schauen ist), schon allein wegen Mads' wunderbarer Physis und seiner einmaligen, tiefgründigen Mimik (vom ersten verstohlenen Blick auf die junge Dame, bis zur sexuellen Begierde und später zur völligen Verzweiflung, als sie doch wieder zu ihrem gelähmten [Ex-]Freund will). Ich persönlich habe den Film übrigens auf dänisch geschaut (mit englischem Untertitel), weil ich so gerne Mads' echte Stimme höre. Dies ist auch leicht verständlich (sofern man etwas Schulenglisch versteht), denn man kommt eigentlich auch so mit, worum es geht. Ich empfehle den Ladies, den Film ohne Mann zu schauen, Männer interessiert das wahrscheinlich eh nicht, da es keine Action gibt.;-)

Film che esplora la forza e la debolezza dell'animo umano. La vita ci mette di fronte a delle scelte e non sempre esiste il giusto o sbagliato.

I really enjoyed this movie. It was told in a way that you felt for everyone. It really tugs at your heart strings. The only thing that I was not happy with is the fact that this movie did not play on my dvd player because it was a zone 2 dvd, and when I ordered this dvd it was not made clear that this dvd only plays on players set to the zone 2 settings. I tried two different dvd players, then I tried two computers, finally it played on the last one I tried. But I was not happy because no one likes watching a movie on a small screne. I felt that I was misled and a bit cheated since I was unable to enjoy this film on my big screen tv on my comfortable couch. So although the movie was good I only enjoyed the watching of it a little.