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Scandinavian countries are statistically some of the safest places to live in the world, but their TV shows say the opposite. This European subregion’s penchant for dark and dreary crime stories first began in books before moving off the page, and since then, television has become the biggest source of what’s now referred to as “Scandi noir.” While these kinds of chilly thrillers caught on after the turn of the century, they appeared as early as the 1980s. One seminal example is Månguden (The Moon God), an ’88 TV-movie inspired by the real-life ‘84 “tent killings” at Lake Appojaure. Because the Swedes were so affected by this “ripped from the headlines” program, it aired only a few times before being indefinitely locked away for two decades.

From Alien Autopsy to Ghostwatch, controversial TV tends to stoke people’s curiosity. And a strong cocktail of obscurity and notoriety was more than...

Above: Polish poster for The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria, 1965). Designer: Jerzy Flisak.As the 55th New York Film Festival winds down this weekend, I thought I’d look back half a century at the films of the 5th edition. That 1967 festival, programmed by Amos Vogel, Richard Roud, Arthur Knight, Andrew Sarris and Susan Sontag, featured 21 new films, all but three of which were from Europe (six of them from France, 2 and 1/7 of them directed by Godard), all of which showed at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall. (They also programmed Gance’s Napoleon, Mamoulian’s Applause and King Vidor’s Show People in the retrospective slots). The only director to have a film in both the 1967 festival and the 2017 edition is Agnès Varda, who was one of the directors of the omnibus Far From Vietnam and was then already 12 years into her filmmaking career.It will come as...

In his first feature since the forgettable 1998 Miramax film "Nightwatch" -- an English-language remake of his 1994 debut -- Danish director Ole Bornedal tries to reinvent the period film, adapting a popular 1988 novel by Herbjorg Wassmo in a lush, expensive, five-country co-production that features one of the most unpleasant-to-be-with heroines in recent memory.

Filmed in English, visually never a bore, but so relentlessly grim in its tone and story line that it becomes ludicrous, "I Am Dina" could be called "I Am Destruction and Death".

Unspooling in the official competition, "Dina" is very robust filmmaking and boasts a cast that includes Gerard Depardieu, Christopher Eccleston and many veterans, but it's unlikely to garner attention outside Europe. Most problematic is Bornedal's misguided attempt to sustain a one-note tone of emotional instability for two hours. No one is given more than a moment's relief in the film from the madness of the lead character.

Starring Maria Bonnevie ("The 13th Warrior") in an energetic but ultimately cliched performance of gaping mouth and crazy eyes, "Dina" opens with the title character as a happy 8-year-old living in Northern Norway during the 1860s.

Mere moments go by before she causes an accident and her mother is hideously killed by a tipped-over vat of boiling lye. Dina's father (Bjorn Floberg) blames the child, and she's forever a haunted being, compensating for the stigma of accidental homicide by abusing almost every man, woman and child who crosses her path.

Indeed, Dina grows up playing the cello, riding horses and head-butting Dad when he tries to impose his will. Apparently a woman of WNBA proportions in the book, Bonnevie is believable throwing punches and kneeing the testicles of her hapless beaus, but these displays of strength -- accompanied by animalistic roars -- are more monstrous than admirable. Married off to a local businessman (Depardieu) who doesn't know what he's in for, Dina finds something she likes in sex -- with her on top and in control, of course.

While her husband is away, she carries on with childhood friend Tomas (Hans Matheson). She's able to conjure her mother's ghost and during a trip to town has a strange connection with a man in the process of being hanged. It's this scene that introduces her to the eventual love of her life, Russian anarchist Leo (Eccleston), though it's just him seeing her from a distance.

Destruction and death ensue.

Depardieu dies horribly from a leg injury. Tomas gets more random visits for meaningless copulation. Niels (Mads Mikkelsen), a stepson of Depardieu's character, is discovered to be an embezzler and drunkenly rapes the wet nurse (Kate Haride) brought in to care for the baby (by Tomas) that Dina could care less about. In the final half-hour, as the ghosts accumulate, Niels is crushed by fate and hangs himself, while Dina's little boy goes flying out of a small sailing boat in stormy weather.

"Dina" is just too much of a bad thing, even when it tries to come in for a happy landing. The production design, costumes and creepy ghost imagery show Bornedal is a director not afraid to spice up the usually restrained 19th-century milieu of family sagas. He's seemingly got no clue that watching this movie to the bitter end offers no rewards or insight into humanity, just cheap thrills.

I AM DINA

Northern Lights, Nordisk Film

Credits:

Director: Ole Bornedal

Screenwriters: Jonas Cornell, Ole Bornedal

Based on the novel by: Herbjorg Wassmo

Producers: Per Holst, Axel Helgeland

Executive producers: Erik Crone, Frank Hubner, Gerhard Schmidt, Klaus Rettig, Eric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer

Director of photography: Dan Laustsen

Production designers: Steffen Aarfing, Marie i Dali

Editors: Thomas Krag, Molly Malene Steensgaard

Music: Marco Beltrami

Costume designer: Dominique Borg

Cast:

Dina: Maria Bonnevie

Jacob: Gerard Depardieu

Leo Zukowskij: Christopher Eccleston

Dina's Father: Bjorn Floberg

Tomas: Hans Matheson

Niels: Mads Mikkelsen

Gertrude: Pernilla August

Running time -- 122 minutes

No MPAA rating...