Review: Love is all You Need (15)

Director Suzanne Bier and her regular writer Anders Thomas Jensen opt for a universal tale of the philandering husband and his younger popsie whose bedroom antics are discovered by his horrified wife (Dyrholm).

The twist is that the wife, hairdresser Ida, is recovering from cancer that has claimed her breast, her hair and her sense of self. At her lowest ebb psychologically, emotionally and physically, Ida attends her daughter’s wedding at which her estranged husband turns up with his lover.

But there is also Philip (Brosnan), the groom’s father, estranged from his son and a man not used to sharing his emotions. Naturally he and Ida begin a wary courtship.

Neither an overtly commercial film nor a traditional arthouse flick, Love is all you Need is nonetheless a feelgood movie that is crammed with the building blocks of a Hollywood crowdpleaser.

Bier and Jensen – and their cast – manage to elevate their story beyond the obvious limitations of a bittersweet romance. Fragile, beautiful and undermined by the emotional maelstrom around her, Dryholm centres this delightful chronicle of lost love and new hope. And Brosnan, nearly 60, finally emerges as a character actor with a performance based on burn-out and resentment.