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Review: A 20th-Century Woman Rethinking ‘The Commune’

Trine Dyrholm in “The Commune.”Credit...Magnolia Pictures
The Commune
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
Drama
Not Rated
1h 51m

Sweeter and soapier than we’ve come to expect from the Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, “The Commune” swaddles the pain of a disintegrating marriage in a good-natured cocoon of laughter and larks.

Set in the mid-1970s and loosely based on the director’s own experiences (previously explored in his stage play, “Kollektivet”), Tobias Lindholm’s screenplay sacrifices credibility for quirkiness. So when Erik and Anna (Ulrich Thomsen and a magnificent Trine Dyrholm) inherit a rambling mansion that they can’t afford to live in, and decide to create a commune to defray expenses, naturally they choose housemates whose peculiarities far exceed their incomes.

Though they provide color and friendly conflict, these folks are never more than narrative satellites, vehicles for embarrassing outbursts and sentimental health crises. Yet among the skinny-dipping sessions and eventful house meetings, Ms. Dyrholm quietly and affectingly takes Anna to the brink of despair and back again. A longtime news anchor whose career is threatened by stress and ageism and whose marriage to Erik — a crabby, self-centered professor — has begun to ossify, Anna seems the sole adult in a house filled with children. Even her wardrobe is out of sync with the other women’s floaty, hippie layers.

Like Annette Bening’s resilient matriarch in Mike Mills’s recent and delightful “20th Century Women” (which shares some thematic similarities with “The Commune”), Anna is a woman of a certain age coping with uncertain times. It says much for Ms. Dyrholm’s performance that we never doubt that she will prevail.

Not rated. In Danish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: The Commune. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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