#4. After the Wedding
In Susan Bier's dark, richly mounted film an idealist, running an orphanage in India, is invited to return to his native Denmark where a rich businessman is offering him the funding he needs to rescue his impoverished institution. He is, however, obliged to attend the wedding of his benefactor's stepdaughter — at which point the movie turns into something like a multilayered 19th century novel, full of unsuspected coincidences and connections, unfinished emotional business, dark rages and even darker reflections on mortality. It may be old-fashioned stylistically, and rather manipulative in its plotting, but there is something deeply satisfying in the way it works out the fates of its troubled, yet believable characters.