Skagerrak

I didnt expect much but was pleasantly surprised by this offering. An unusual film but keeps you interested right up to the end which has a most unexpected twist. Always good to see Helen Baxendale, however, she really isn't in the film that much........

This movie was quite entertaining, although it's not nearly as good as Mifune (also starring Iben Hjejle). It's a modern-day fairytale, where our Princess is the danish woman, Marie Nielsen. She and her Irish friend, Sophie lead a carefree life. Their lives consist of an endless line of parties with men and booze!

One day, Marie gets offered a chance to become a surrogate mother for a very wealthy couple and she eventually accepts.

Suddenly, Marie's life changes dramatically - and the events that follow will test her willpower, amongst other things.

All in all a charming little tale with superb acting, especially by Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity) as Marie, Bronagh Gallagher (The Commitments) as Sophie, and the charming Martin Henderson (The Ring, Windtalkers) as Ian.

I guess this film failed to get significant, if any, distribution to cinemas. I wondered whether to bother setting the vcr. It was worth it! McBurney was tops for me plus a cameo for (the now late) Russell Hunter at the funeral. Multi-cultural mayhem. Raises disturbing questions about the good films we miss because they are not flavour of the year.

Marie and Sophie work the fishing boats, going from one job to another. They get paid and move into a Scottish hotel for a few weeks R&R before getting back to work. When Marie is approached by well off land owner Robert with the offer of money if she has a baby with his son (who's own wife is unable to conceive). After much to-ing and fro-ing Marie agrees to do it and gets pregnant. However when Sophie dies, Marie is left alone and changes her mind and goes looking for help.

Marie's dream is of family and a nice home, a dream that seems far off with her wild lifestyle of going from port to port with her friend Sophie working the boats for enough money to hold them until the next job. This film appears to lack focus because it makes you think it will be an emotionally story focused on the baby, whereas really Marie is the focus and her baby is only one of the things that happen to her. In this regard the film does tend to wander, replacing emotional events with actual ones, meaning that the film feels like it is just going somewhere for the sake of going somewhere. It still has emotional involvement because Marie is a good focus but her life events over 9 months just seem too far fetched and unlikely in comparison to the story I expected from the first 20 minutes.

A big reason it works is the performance of Hjejle; she has a very difficult character and, while she doesn't manage to make it totally real, she does enough to engage the audience in her story. Henderson is OK but has a strange character that the script just moves around as it required. The support cast of Scottish actors are quite enjoyable including faces such as the ever-present Cosmo as well as Gary Lewis and McBurney. Gallagher does reasonably well but is secondary to the film in terms of focus, also she doesn't have enough to work with to really distinguish her from some of her other `rough Irish lass' performances.

Overall this is an interesting film thanks mostly to a performance by Hjejle that holds the material together better than it deserves. It doesn't have a great heart to it and wanders too far at times in terms of events but it is still worth seeing despite never really being totally convincing.