Is this a true, fictional narrative, or is it the figment of the fictional writer's imagination? If that sounds contradictory, then it gives you some inkling about the substance or lack thereof of this most confusing and yet most intriguing film.
Is this a film about filming a narrative? Is it a film about two narratives one real fiction, one imaginary fiction? Or, is it simply a film designed to act as a metaphor for the total uncertainty about human relationships? Perhaps, it's all three... or simply an illusion?
As it unfolds, we meet a very confused young man, Alex (Nikolaj Lei Kaas) who seems to be in love with the same woman who exists in two different realities and, yet, who co-exist in the same city. On the one hand, Alex is associated with Simone (Maria Bonnevie) definitely and yet, he meets another woman, Aimee (again, Maria Bonnevie), who looks exactly like Simone, in another part of town.
Whereas Simone is definitely single, Aimee is apparently married to August, a writer who is in town to give some lectures on the art of writing. At the same time, August is also trying to finish his novel that is a love story, but he's having trouble trying to decide what "the young man" of his story should do and he tells Aimee about his dilemma while they sit in their hotel room.
So, while August is discussing the progress of his narrative with his publisher, Monica (Ida Dwinger), young Alex is roaming all over the city trying to understand how it is that both women appear to know him for some of the time, and at other times, he appears to be a stranger to them. Frantically, he rushes from café, to a bar, to a restaurant, to another bar, desperately trying to come to grips with his concept of his reality which, oddly enough, doesn't appear to jive with the reality of anybody that Alex thinks he knows...
Totally confused now? Well, you should be, because I think Reconstruction is an experimental film that tries to show just how confusing every person's sense of their own reality must be not only for each person, but to others around them also.
You think you really, really know your girlfriend, your wife, your boyfriend, your husband, your lover? This film, I think, forces you to reflect (no pun intended) upon that existential problem, a very real problem for every living person, whether or not we know it. The camera work is also experimental, and some of it is quite original in its construction. You'll know what I mean when you see it that is, if you're prepared to watch it.
Definitely not a film for action fans or the 'braindead'.
