Film Festival Blog: A Review of "The Art of Crying"

From Anne Price, blogging from the Cleveland International Film Festival, a review of "The Art of Crying"...

Dad cries.
Mom sighs.
Sis lies.
Brother tries.
Someone dies.
It's sunny skies,
through a child's eyes.

A review like this would be inappropriate for most films. To explain Denmark's The Art of Crying, a black comedy about murder and incest, it's fitting tribute. Director Peter Schønau Fog doesn't seem to be sure exactly what he's aiming for with this ambitious, alternately hilarious and shocking film.

Primarily it's the story of pre-teen Allan (Jannik Lorenzen), the youngest child of a pastoral Jutland family during the early 1970's. Serious and pensive, he cannot stand his parents continual fighting. Each night, father Henry (Jesper Asholt) bursts into tears and melodramatic threats of suicide. Taking on the role of peacemaker, Allan idolizes his father and wants to help. When efforts fail, he enlists the aid of older sister, Sanne (Julie Kolbeck). Early on, the film only hints to audiences what takes place in these comfort sessions.

A Classic Dysfunctional Family
Eventually Sanne wants no part of helping her father. Allan's confused. He doesn't realize what the comforting costs his sister, and is increasingly distressed at every family member's strange actions.

By good fortune, Allan stumbles onto something else that helps alleviate his father's fits of pique: delivering eulogies. It seems the outpouring of emotion this man reserves primarily for himself also translates into heartfelt graveside speeches. In one of the film's funniest sequences, Allan's mother reminds her husband that once he starts talking, he begins to think of himself akin to Jesus. Moments later the father's first eulogy includes "blessed are the peacemakers...".

Seeing his father happy again, Allan is then intent on helping this trend continue. He's even willing to provide the bodies, if necessary.

Unfortunately, the film isn't content to remain at this admittedly bleak, but funny, level. It eventually takes the audience down the rabbit hole into Henry's nightly visits with the daughter. Families rotting from the head down, as the cliche goes, isn't unchartered film territory. The Art of Crying stands alone in weaving this reality with continued humor.

Here things got a bit muddy: the audience seemed to alternate between moments of real belly laughs and squeamish utterings, rapidly and repeatedly. It's hard to find any balance between laughter and emotionally shattering events.

Confused, but Workable
Despite suffering from an identity crisis, the movie succeeds in several places. Overall, it's as complicated and confused as the family it depicts. Alternating between breezy and black humor while depicting the most shameful of family secrets, it's simply all over the place. Somehow, though, it manages to work.

That said, Fog shows guts and unflinching stoicism in tackling such a complex matter. If nothing else, it's realistic. Certainly every family suffering through manipulative parents and even incest runs through the same gamut of emotions as their more functional counterparts. In that way, Fog honors loyalty's complexity and the ways in which families collude, allowing - sometimes forcing - good memories to supercede secrets and lies.

Recognition for The Art of Crying
The Art of Crying won several awards at other festivals, including the audience award at the Mannheim Heidelberg International Film Festival. Based on viewers comments overheard during the credits, the movie's generated a great deal of support at the Cleveland festival, also.

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The Cleveland International Film Festival runs through March 25 at the Tower City Cinemas in downtown Cleveland. Individual tickets are $10. For more information, see the CIFF Web site.

^{(Image © Eigentum des Jeweligen Studio/used with permission)}