by Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Rex Leonard, Lior David Cohen, Laura Bach, Carla Eleonora Feigenberg
Intro:
... sparse, raw ...
Spanning the five-year period after an intense teenage break-up, Ludvig C. Poulsen’s sparse, raw Danish drama In Ashes presents an unconventional coming-of-age tale.
Presented in a combination of perspectives – from handheld iPhone footage to the lens of a standard film camera – we follow the radical shifts in mood and activity from the film’s twentysomething protagonist, Christian, as he navigates university studies and clumsy casual sex.
The naturalistic lighting and believable performances, paired with minimal interference from the film’s composer Andreas Schmidt Nielsen, present a very matter-of-fact experience of heartbreak in early adulthood.
Rex Leonard brings a pained, complex performance as the lonely, prickly Christian, seeking passionless hookups as a substitute for intimacy. In a brilliant move from the filmmaker, the conflict this presents – searching for emotional intimacy in the wrong places – is even woven into Christian’s university studies.
His chosen major is shown to be economic theory or finance, and yet he is constantly filming experiences with his family and his former boyfriend, doing so with all the formless energy of a French New Wave film. This passion for dynamic storytelling and capturing the ephemeral beauty of life has no place in the study halls of an economics degree.
As such, this adds great depth of complexity to Christian’s character, one of many small, excellent details within Poulsen’s clearly personal screenplay.
The film’s brief runtime is necessary as well as appreciated, given the increasingly erratic behaviour through which we follow Christian’s deterioration. His obsessive pining for his ex-boyfriend, who resurfaces on a dating app during a return home between semesters, escalates to increasingly tense and uncomfortable territory.
While we do observe him pretend to be a fake online profile and eventually stalk his ex to a bar, all of this is presented in a way in which we can understand why it is being done.
No Psycho score, no intense closeups. Just flat, realistic depictions of love, loss, and all the ecstasy and anguish that falls between them both.
