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Director:         Ole Bornedal Starring:         Anders W. Berthelsen - Jonas; Rebecka Hemse - Julia; Charlotte Fich - Mette 'Beautiful women and a mystery. Isn't that how all film noirs begin?' This observation, made early on by our leading man's confident, not-so-subtly clues us in on that which we are about to see. And although in itself it is more thriller than mystery, it certainly manages to more than hold its own in the film noir genre. The 2007 creation of Danish writer/director Ole Bornedal - due for DVD release in the UK this week - Just Another Love Story is a smartly made, well acted, and suspenseful piece, which combines an involving plot with an enjoyably dark sense of humour. The aforementioned leading man is Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen), a crime-scene photographer who lives a pleasant if sanitised Ikea-esque lifestyle with his wife Mette (Charlotte Fich) and their two children.

It should quickly become apparent that this is not Just Another Love Story as the title would suggest. This Danish crime drama about assumed identity, memory loss and infidelity also looks to take a darker turn as this exclusive clip reveals.Starring Anders W. Berthelsen and Rebecka Hemse, Just Another Love Story follows a normal guy, Jonas (Berthelsen), who becomes embroiled in the confusing web of lies of an amnesiac victim of an accident he witnessed. Assuming the identity of the boyfriend she has no memory of, Jonas becomes Sebastian in the eyes of her concerned family and falls in love with Julia for real. But there is a more sinister undertone to the affair as the reality of her accident comes back to haunt them both.Just Another Love Story is due in the UK on July 24.

What a brilliant film. It's a genuinely fresh feeling to be drawn in and affected by a film nowadays - with so much stale material on a reviewer's plate, sometimes it's difficult to remember just how good films can be. Ole Bornedal's 2007 Just Another Love Story (Kærlighed på film) is an impeccably mounted neo-noir, using typical genre tropes to tell an immediate and effective story. It's a mix of genres that at first almost dares you to expect the film and filmmaker to let you down. But it never does. It never ceases to impress in telling an intricately plotted and perfectly crafted story with its potently talented director, cast and crew. The performances are stellar, the cinematography is gorgeous, the soundtrack is just right and the editing takes daring risks with symbolism that pay off in the end.

Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen, playing the conflicted everyman to perfection...

'Just Another Love Story" is anything but. Under Danish writer-director Ole Bornedal, it is a creative mix of horror, noir and psychological thriller. At times the story defies logic, but viewers who can accept that will find themselves caught up in the film's intensity.

Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen) is a crime-scene photographer for the police. He has an attractive, blond wife (Charlotte Fich) and two cute kids. He also has, as he says in a voiceover, "a new flat that smells of paint in a faceless new part of town,...

In his films Nightwatch and The Substitute, Danish director Ole Bornedal established his attraction to the intersection of the fantastic and the everyday. Whether it's a morgue worker accused of murdering prostitutes or a sixth-grade class convinced that their new teacher is an alien, Bornedal enjoys placing ordinary people in absurd situations, then calibrating the outlandish until it becomes plausible. In Bornedal's latest film, Just Another Love Story, Anders Berthelsen plays a crime-scene photographer who grudgingly tolerates a family life devoid of adventure and low on sexual passion. After a distraught Rebecka Hemse sideswipes Berthelsen's car on ...

In his films Nightwatch and The Substitute, Danish director Ole Bornedal established his attraction to the intersection of the fantastic and the everyday. Whether it's a morgue worker accused of murdering prostitutes or a sixth-grade class convinced that their new teacher is an alien, Bornedal enjoys placing ordinary people in absurd situations, then calibrating the outlandish until it becomes plausible. In Bornedal's latest film, Just Another Love Story, Anders Berthelsen plays a crime-scene photographer who grudgingly tolerates a family life devoid of adventure and low on sexual passion. After a distraught Rebecka Hemse sideswipes Berthelsen's car on her way to a horrific crash, he visits her in the hospital, where her family assumes he's her boyfriend. When Hemse comes out of her coma with amnesia, Berthelsen continues the deception, only to discover that impersonating Hemse's lover can be a dangerous hobby. Bornedal has claimed that Just Another Love Story...

This Friday, January 9, acclaimed Danish filmaker Ole (Nightwatch) Bornedal will continue to solidify his reputation as an interesting and versatile director with the New York release (prior to national rollout) of his latest film, Just Another Love Story. Don’t let the title fool you; while not exactly horror, this hard-hitting noir is full of enough dark subject matter and jarring violence to satisfy any genre fan.

The film tells the story of Jonas (Anders Bertelsen), crime scene photographer, husband and father of two. Growing tired of his mundane family life, condo and crappy car, he dreams of what’s out there in the rest of the world. After inadvertently causing a terrible accident, he becomes obsessed with the more unfortunate driver, a beautiful woman named Julia (Rebecka Hemse), who winds up in the hospital in a coma. While she’s recuperating, Jonas goes to her bedside. Julia’s family...

By Neil Pedley

There's a welcome change of pace this week, with nary a Nazi in sight. Character actors go to work both in front of and behind the camera, there's a white wedding, a black comedy and a bizarre love triangle in Plautdietsch just over the Mexican border.

"8 Films to Die For: After Dark Horrorfest 2009"

For one week only, nasty niche distributor After Dark Films terrorizes 300 screens across the country with their third annual "Horrorfest" showcase featuring a selection of eight indie horror films. This year's selection comprises of: "Autopsy," the Lena Headey-Richard Jenkins' thriller "The Broken," "The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations," "Dying Breed," "Perkins' 14," "Slaughter," the Korean frightfest "Voices," and "From Within," which Alison Willmore noted during its Tribeca premiere wasn't exactly for God-fearing types. Eight films to die for is what they say -- we'll settle for being made to perhaps feel a bit sick afterwards.

Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY -- "Just Another Love Story", a compelling psychological thriller from Danish writer-director Ole Bornedal, wins style and design points but is weak on logic.

Nevertheless, that style -- self-confident, smart, keenly observant -- pulls you into a slick and somewhat disturbing film noir. The film certainly is playable in North American and European art houses, even though it ends on a chilly note that some might find off-putting.

Bornedal makes no bones about borrowing from here and there, and one such borrowing comes from "Sunset Boulevard", where the corpse of a crime victim narrates his fatal tale.

The man lying quite dead on a sidewalk one rainy night is Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen), estranged husband of Mette (Charlotte Fich), who the next moment comes moving into the frame, screaming. How Jonas ended up dead involves a love story. Of sorts.

Julia (Rebecka Hemse) comes into Jonas' life with a bang. Actually worse than a bang as the distracted woman, on a cell phone, swipes her rental car against Jonas' beater, which has stalled again on a road outside of Copenhagen. She then crashes head-on with an oncoming vehicle, her car flips over and she winds up in a coma in a hospital.

Feeling unreasonably guilty, Jonas sneaks into Julia's hospital room, where her family mistakes him for Sebastian, a new boyfriend she acquired on a recent trip to Southeast Asia. Jonas doesn't bother to correct them. When Julia awakens, conveniently suffering from amnesia and near blindness, she accepts him as Sebastian, too.

Jonas happens to work as a photographer of crime scenes, so a police colleague, Frank (Dejan Cukic), checks on this Sebastian fellow. Another dramatic convenience: Frank learns that Sebastian, a low-life though charming smuggler, died in Hanoi.

Pretty soon, Jonas is leading an implausible double life: a loving and compassionate Sebastian to Julia and her wealthy family and a distracted and miserable Jonas to his own family. Jonas already was in the midst of one of those midlife crises that are staples in Scandinavian cinema, where the hero just doesn't like the life he leads and wants a completely different one. So he gets his wish.

Julia's recovery is miraculous, the two fall into something resembling love, her family adores Sebastian, and she is pregnant. So who is that guy with his face wrapped in bandages like the Invisible Man, always lurking around her room? How did Julia get pregnant before she and Jonas had their first rendezvous in the hospital bed? If you're thinking that this Sebastian fellow Nikolaj Lie Kaas) might not be dead after all, you really don't have another choice.

Bornedal builds his suspense neatly, upping the emotional ante every so often with a new twist and fully exploiting exquisite cinematography by Dan Laustsen in Denmark and Cambodia and a fine guitar-based score by Joachim Holbek. Irony is writ large everywhere as the film dispassionately charts the new life and the seemingly inevitable demise of Jonas/Sebastian, who falls deeper and deeper into a self-made quagmire.

The climax is genuinely suspenseful, menacing and nerve-racking. You might not buy all the elements -- it's a little too neat, too engineered. But then, the same can be said for the entire movie.

JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY

Thura Film

Credits:

Screenwriter-director: Ole Bornedal

Producer: Michael Obel

Director of photography: Dan Laustsen

Production designer: Anders Engelbrecht

Music: Joachim Holbek

Editor: Anders Villadsen

Cast:

Jonas: Anders W. Berthelsen

Julia: Rebecka Hemse

Sebastian: Nikolaj Lie Kaas

Mette: Charlotte Fich

Frank: Dejan Cukic

Poul: Karsten Jansfort

Julia's Father: Bent Mejding

Running time -- 107 minutes

No MPAA rating...