Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg s buoyant comedy about a school teacher who turns to alcohol to cope with his midlife crisis is very different in tone from Tove Ditlevsen s slim, punchy autobiographical trilogy Childhood, Youth, Dependency about a gifted poet who achieves fame but ends up a drug addict. Yet both are set in Copenhagen and wise to the slippery slope of substance abuse and its nihilistic appeal. Vinterberg finds black humour in tragedy, while Ditlevsen becomes mired in it. There s a plainspoken clarity to her prose that somehow makes the devastating trajectory of her short life hit even harder.
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