Shaped by the Dogma manifesto (but busting a virgin rule or two) and honed by Mike Leigh's "workshop" methods of actors elaborating their characters, then conflating sketch-like scenes into a script, Annette K Olesen's Minor Mishaps is a fitfully entertaining Danish comedy.
It's about a dysfunctional family, though its members all look and behave like unrelated strangers. Dad is a workaholic hospital orderly with a wonky heart, but a cheery disposition; his wife dies suddenly and is buried with a red cabbage on her coffin, instead of a wreath, as she spent her life cooking.
The sons, daughters and in-laws mill around Dad, mixing uneasily and noisily with one another's private lives. One of them suspects her father of incest (or else is wilfully parodying Thomas Vinterberg's Dogma success, Festen); another is an adultery addict, convinced her husband's having it off with his bimbo receptionist; a country wife confesses she has cuckolded her husband with a city gent; a layabout uncle smugly announces he's a stateregistered arthritic ankle-case; and a poetically inclined sibling composes
Japanese haikus: "I would like to have/Pussy and rock 'n' roll/Every damn day", which certainly conforms to the syllabic metre, though its profundity is to be doubted.
It's a head 'n' shoulders film; loquacious and diffuse. Actors luxuriate in such selfrevelatory exercises; spectators may find them incontinent.
But it feels authentically Danish. Tourists aren't likely to run into these people. Perhaps we should be grateful.
Minor Mishaps (Sma Ulykker)
Cert: cert15