Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt/Älskar Dig För Evigt) [Region 2]

This is a touching story of how quickly life can be altered forever, from an impending wedding which will never happen to a happy family being broken up. It touches on real-life issues that many people face nowadays. A good watch.

This bittersweet exploration of the emotional collapse of two families due to a horrible accident is raw, gritty, heartbreaking and truly shattering, and I highly recommend it - although it's not at all easy to sit through.Multiple viewings only make this film stronger, and no one walks away from the horrible wreckage of these two breakups unscarred. Nicholaj Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkelsen (a terrific duo) play a young man paralized in a car accident and a doctor who is partially resposible for his fate - his spouse was driving the other car. As the stress of the painful situation causes everyone to emotionally and physically fall apart - noone is truly innocent or completely guilty in this tragedy - the levels of abuse and denial inflicted upon the various members of the two families is gut wrenching and truthful, whether the actions come through shock, thoughtless dependence or neediness manifested as passion. Mads Mikkelsens' face in the penultimate scene is dazzlingly moving - as in a split second - he contemplates what he has done and what he is left with, in the wake of passion and loss.This Danish film is unafraid to show characters without glamour and to explore a story with no easy heros and victims. I dare the viewer to watch this film and NOT want to shout at the screen at certain points - to warn/to cajole/to rebute/to scream. This is a very painful and very great film - one best for adults due to some nudity and vicious emotional behaviour.If you enjoy Dogma films, if you look for Mads Mikkelsen or Nicholaj Lie Kaas in films, if you want a film that will challenge you and possibly break your heart - you will want to see this one!

The move itself is very good, It does not have English subtitles, I had to gather my "nonexistent" knowledge of Spanish and Norwegian to understand the movie.

Will watch anything with Mikkelsen and 90% of his films are marvelous. He's such a compelling screen presence that nothing he is in can be a disappointment.

The story is good. Actors and actress were incredible credible, but dubbing the movie intou English was a downer.Sorry.

I had seen this several years ago but plan to use ideas in course and wanted to see it again. I was shocked y how much it affected me. I am working in Prisoner's dilemma in movies and this presents 4 people's choices that you can look as as dilemma that all affect each other. It demonstrates the human condition as complicated dilemma.

Mads Mikkelsen's performance is some of the best acting I have ever seen. Amazing movie, I usually don't watch emotional dramas, but Open Hearts is so much more. It was so real with out being overly gritty and not at all contrived. I almost have to remind myself that I just watched a movie and not a chunk of someone's actual life.

In the passionate, and passionately executed Danish movie "The Royal Affair," also starring Mads Mikkelsen, the extra-marital affair between the doctor and the queen is, in truth, an innocent and brave love, crushed by the overwhelming might of the king and the Danish royal court. The love affair is innocent for the following reasons: the marriage between the Danish king and the British queen is arranged, as it used to be among royalty in Europe. Once the young queen sees the strange and offensive behavior of the Danish king, a spoiled young man who had never managed to grow up, she is deeply disappointed and begins to hate him, although she decides to bear her fate with dignity. When the German doctor (Mads) arrives, she finds out that he is a kindred soul, sharing her enlightenment ideas. The two are strongly drawn to each other, not only by sexual passion, but also by intellectual, political, and emotional affinities. Although the queen is superficially unfaithful to the king, she does not, in my view, betray him. Her marriage to him was forced upon her, without her say or choice, and his abusive behavior frustrates her well-meaning efforts to draw him closer to her. Where there is no love, there is no betrayal.This is not the case with Open Hearts, unfortunately. (Spoilers) The movie opens with a tragic accident, which could lead to a rich, deep, and thoughtful movie, but it doesn't. A young engaged couple, madly in love, are driving along the street. They stop to let off the young man, who is going on a hiking trip before he marries his fiancee. As he gets out of the car, he is hit by a passing car and rushed to the hospital. The verdict is grim: as the fall shattered his spine, he will not be able to move any limb from the neck down--for ever. We feel compassion for the victims, who must pay an unfathomable price for an ordinary mistake. We pity the young woman who visits her fiance in the hospital every day, the whole day, trying desperately to convince him that they could overcome the injury and share some kind of life together. The man responds to her plea with unmitigated, and sometimes sadistic, anger. Filled with self-pity, he rejects her approaches and orders her not to see him again. (Couldn't he be a bit nicer?) She is crushed.This opening is very promising. However, what happens next reduces the film to melodrama. Mads Mikkelsen plays one of the doctors in charge of the injured young man. (It was his wife's car, incidentally, that hit the young man.) In her panic, the young woman turns to him for support and comfort. We are also obliquely informed that his sexual relationships with his wife have vanished long before. Why, we are not told. Is it just a weakening of the sexual flame between long-married partners, or is there a deeper conflict, or hostility, between the two? Well, one can see where this goes. The comfort the doctor offers the distraught and attractive young woman quickly develops into a lustful affair. All right, I understand, perhaps, why the doctor needs sex. But doesn't he know that he is taking advantage of a wounded and vulnerable woman? And why would the young woman, who hasn't had the chance to digest what has happened to her, and who surely still loves her injured fiance, why would she leap so quickly into the arms of another man (even if he is the handsome Mads Mikkelsen)? This makes no sense to me. What is the value of her love for her fiance if she so quickly plunges into an affair with his doctor? Where are her inner conflicts? She seems to have none. Where is her self-respect? Where are her attempts to stand up, on her own, to the "whips and scorns of time," as Hamlet would put it? And even if she pleads for the doctor's support, must it lead to an affair? I just don't understand why it is so easy for the doctor and the young woman to engage in such a light-headed affair so soon after the accident. Was the director more concerned with the sensational possibilities that the movie offered her rather than with the psychological truths of the characters? If fact, the only dignified character in this movie is the doctor's wife, who is also an excellent actor. At first, she feels guilty about inadvertently hitting the young man with her car and therefore encourages her husband's offers of solace to the young woman. But when she finds out about the affair, she is the one who tells him the truth about his weak and miserable self and thus presents the only moral point of view in the movie. However, she loses. The doctor insists that he is in love with the young woman and escapes his home and his children. Back and forth they go, and the ending is ambiguous.Finally, Hemingway's advice to writers is applicable to all artists. During Hemingway's conversation with Scott Fitzgerald, the writer of The Great Gatsby described how he changed his short stories for submission, "knowing exactly how he must make the twists that made them into salable magazine stories." Hemingway is shocked by this betrayal of art and says he "did not believe anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent" (Ernest Hemingawy, A moveable Feast, 153). Hemingway's is a sterling counsel to the rising stars and directors of the new and often riveting Danish movies.

I was really disappointed in this film.I looked at it after seeing an interview with the director on BBC Hardtalk and then I saw other recommend this film on amazon saying how good the acting was and so on but I found it emotionally unabsorbing and an unlightly story in many ways.Even though there were certain themes dealt with that are very real and relevant like dealing with a lover who then becomes disabled in a car crash and a husband who is drawn into extra marital affair with a much younger woman and who happens to be the said girlfriend of the guy who is disabled,it just seems an unlikely turn of events.Their "love affair"does not seem really to be built on anything other then lust or her neediness due to the accident and his weakness in letting it get too far.I don't know,it just did not draw me in or make me feel any real sympathy for the characters.I just found it all bit passé really and like "is that it,really"

Danish screenwriter, producer and director Susanne Bier`s seventh feature film which was written by Danish screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, is based on an idea by Susanne Bier. It premiered at the 30th Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund in 2002, was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 27th Toronto International Film Festival in 2002, in the Official Selection section at the 50th San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2002, was shot on location in Denmark and is a Danish production which was produced by Danish producer Vibeke Windeløv. It tells the story about a geography student named Joachim whom is going on a mountain climbing trip to Patagonia, South America and who on the day after having proposed to his 25-year-old girlfriend named Cæcilie who is a chef, is hit by a car and hospitalized. Whilst Cæcilie is waiting to see Joachim at the hospital, she is introduced to a doctor named Niels who lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with his wife named Marie and their 6-year-old son named Emil, 8-year-old son named Gustav and 14-year-old daughter named Stine who is in high school and who is having a fall out with her best friend regarding her boyfriend. Niels tells Cæcilie who he is and after talking with Marie who feels responsible for what has happened to Joachim, he begins spending time with Cæcilie.Distinctly and subtly directed by Nordic filmmaker Susanne Bier, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws a profoundly heartrending portrayal of a Danish woman who goes out of her way to get her boyfriend to love her like he did before his accident, a Danish father and husband who instigated by his and his wife`s consciousness makes himself available for her and a concerned daughter`s relationship with her father. While notable for its distinct and naturalistic milieu depictions and fine cinematography by Danish cinematographer Morten Søborg, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven story about fate`s intervention in the lives of ordinary people where a coincidental accident brings people together, separates them and affects each and every one of them and where human compassion leads to love and sorrow, depicts four humane and interrelated studies of character and contains a great and timely score by composer Jesper Winge Leisner.This sociological, at times humerous and utterly gripping drama from the early 2000s which is set in the capital city of Denmark in the early 21st century and where a daughter wonders why her father can buy a woman he has just met lots of furniture when he can`t even buy her a dress, and a charming and lively man becomes an unrecognizable person after being paralysed from his neck and down, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, natural and endearing characters, intimate realism, distinguishable depiction of interpersonal relations and the graciously heartfelt acting performances by Danish actors Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Danish actresses Sonja Richter, Paprika Steen and Stine Bjerregaard in her debut feature film role. An acutely and gracefully romantic character piece which gained, among other awards, the Bodil Award for Best Danish Film at the 56th Bodil Awards in 2002.

I loved the film long before I bought the DVD. If I should summarize it in a single sentence, I'd say it's an astonishing portrayal of pain and suffering in a movie with no antagonist.I knew that the film is brilliant. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised to realize that someone actually put an effort into making a well-packed DVD. The amount of extra features is quite amazing; especially if you take into an account that this is not a Hollywood blockbuster, which could afford to have a huge PR department.That being said, the DVD contains press conference from San Sebastian Film Festival (which lasts for about 25 minutes), featurette (about 10 minutes), three deleted scenes, audio commentary (by the director, producer, and actors), trailers and couple other things.It is great to know that even years after I first saw the film, and after I fell in love with it, I can still learn something new about it.

I watched this DVD last night and I was in tears on a couple of occasions. It's a love story, but with a twist - when an unexpected accident happened, the fate of the characters were suddenly changed. What would they do?The story-line is honest, convincing and believable. Great acting from the leads. It is a simple plot but utterly moving. Although it's tragic, it's also uplifting.I would recommend this film to anyone who have an open heart. I have no doubt that you will be touched by this wonderful story.

what a beautiful and powerful film , yes it made me cry but this is not a tear jerker , in the american sense , but a really tender story about consiquences and choices . Sonja Richter is beautiful and captivating and i warmed to all the other characters too , no goody/bad wife or lover here . This is my first Susan Bier film but not my last . Not just a film for women , my partner was captivated too .perfect saturday night film with a bottle of wine .