TIFF 2011: SUPERCLASICO Review

Christian, it must be said, has had a bad year. His wife has left him for a younger man. His teenage son has taken to dressing all in black and barely speaks to him. His business is slowly sliding into the gutter. Sure, those last two bits are due at least as much to the fact that Christian has climbed ever more steadily into a bottle over the past several months - his high end wine shop providing several pricey options to choose from - as they are to his wife, Anna, leaving him but from his perspective it's much simpler to blame all of his misfortune on her departure.

And so Christian does what he feels is necessary when Anna sends him divorce papers so that she can marry her new lover. He packs up their son and heads off to convince her otherwise. It doesn't matter that she left because they weren't happy even when they were together. It doesn't matter that she's moved off to another continent and that her new lover is one of the most famous football players on the planet who he has zero chance of winning her back from. Life was better when she was with him and so Christian wants her back and off he goes.

A premise like this from the director of emotionally raw films like Prague and Angels In Fast Motion should mean only one thing on the surface - trauma, trauma and more trauma - but there's more to Ole Christian Madsen than often meets the eye. Though a difficult film Prague had a surprising undercurrent of pitch black humor and with Superclasico Madsen pitches marital collapse as a full on, up tempo comedy. And because Madsen is smart enough to make the film about the possibilities of new beginnings rather than the failure of past attempts it works admirably well.

Though Paprika Steen is the biggest name in the film as Anna, Superclasico is unquestionably Anders Berthelsen's picture from start to finish. Christian's is a classic fish out of water story, the sad sack leading man being forced to go way, way out of his comfort zone as he journeys to Buenos Aries for what he expects will be a fiery confrontation with Anna's athletic new lover. Instead he gets a naked hug from the lover and a lascivious glance from the senior-citizen housekeeper. And off we go on a trip where nothing at all is what Christian expected it would be, least of all himself, and it is only as he begins to understand this that he begins to find any peace.

Quite possibly the happiest movie about divorce ever made Superclasico is a smart, frequently laugh out loud comedy meant for those who have been around the block once or twice. Berthelsen brings fabulous depth to his performance as Christian as well as great comic timing, Madsen is as sure behind the camera as ever, and while the script sometimes feels as though it's trying to be too many things at once and some subplots never quite resolve - such as Christian's impromptu friendship with a local winemaker - it remains sharp, funny and entertaining from start to finish. While the decision to make a crowd-pleaser out of a story of marital collapse is a surprising one Madsen has succeeded admirably.