Terribly Happy

Not quite a comedy but as darkly comic a crime drama as you're likely to find, this noir-tinged Danish drama (“based on actual events,” according to the credits) is a weirdly compelling portrait of a town that sports its own sense of justice. Robert Hansen (Jakob Cedergren), a Copenhagen cop with a rocky past, washes up in an isolated community with an eccentric population, where everybody knows everyone else's secrets and is content to simply watch the same cycles repeat themselves. “That's not the way we do things around here” is their deadpan response to Hansen's attempt to arrest a shoplifter or stop a man from beating his wife. While there's not much happy to be found in this little purgatory, there is plenty of terrible—a femme fatale, a bully of a drunk, a doctor of dubious ethics, and a bog where inconvenient secrets are sent to die. Director Henrik Ruben Genz maintains the unsettling mood perfectly in this Danish equivalent of the Coen brothers' Blood Simple with touches of David Lynch's sensibility. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Genz and co-producer Thomas Gammeltoft, a behind-the-scenes featurette (20 min.), a pair of comical (possibly staged) TV interviews with Genz and author Erling Jepsen, and a brief essay by film historian Foster Hirsch. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a winning foreign film.] (S. Axmaker)