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Film

Another Round

Thomas Vinterberg

Due for release in December

ACCORDING to some reports, Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud once suggested that humans are born with a blood alcohol level that is 0.05 per cent too low. An unorthodox idea, for sure, and one that is at the heart of Danish midlife crisis drama Another Round. The results, it is fair to say, wouldn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, the film sees four childhood friends – now all teachers – become willing guinea pigs during a 40th birthday meal. Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) is morose, bursting into tears over his stale marriage and a history class that has revolted over his blatant apathy. He throws himself wholeheartedly into a Skårderud-style study: how social and professional performance can be affected by a constant level of inebriation. Thanks to regular top-ups of vodka, Martin soon has both his once-disillusioned students and previously aloof wife Trine (Maria Bonnevie) in raptures.

Psychology lecturer Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) and choir leader Peter (Lars Ranthe) also reap the benefits of day drinking early on, with the latter inspiring a rousing practice between swigs from his secret stash. This motley trio appear to back up a that found creative cognition can significantly improve with the buzz of alcohol. Participants just under the US legal limit proved to be quicker problem-solvers than those who were entirely sober.

Gym instructor Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), however, probably isn’t the ideal candidate for their haphazard experiment. According to one from 2000, athletes who drink habitually are twice as likely to be injured, while alcohol consumption can also affect healing times, dehydration levels and performance. Little wonder, then, that the most physically active test subject has the most difficulty adapting.

Yet it doesn’t take long for the others’ lives to go hopelessly awry too. Walls are bashed into and relationships are torn apart as on-screen blood alcohol levels show just how much they push past that supposed sweet spot of 0.05 per cent into oblivion. Martin may cite under-the-influence high-achievers such as Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill to justify the debauchery, but it is pretty clear that the gang isn’t going to be penning literary classics or guiding a nation any time soon.

Vinterberg isn’t interested in demonising alcohol, though. Sure, the quartet’s issues are exacerbated by a tipple or 10, but as Martin’s mid-dinner breakdown proves, they had already risen to the surface before the experiment began.

Like his Oscar-nominated drama The Hunt, which starred Mikkelsen as a man accused of child abuse, Vinterberg isn’t afraid to lighten the mood with flashes of dark humour. Take when a wasted Nikolaj tries to breathalyse himself with a baby monitor, for example, or an equally sozzled Peter’s supermarket meltdown over the lack of fresh cod (incredibly, none of the utterly convincing leads touched a drop of alcohol throughout the shoot).

Offering neither a celebration nor a condemnation of drinking culture, the film’s well-balanced narrative may frustrate those expecting a Leaving Las Vegas-esque descent into despair. Yet Skårderud’s idea doesn’t appear to be remotely sustainable in the real world – well, Vinterberg’s version of it anyway.