Susan Granger’s review of “Families Like Ours” (Studiocanal/Netflix)
To quote Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” – totally out of context – “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”…as that entire country faces mandatory evacuation.
Set in the not-too-distant future, Thomas Vinterberg’s seven-episode miniseries “Families Like Ours” chronicles what happens when calamitous climate change forces six million Danish citizens to flee slowly encroaching sea water.
Working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nikolaj (Esben Smed) is one of the first government officials to hear about the dire threat. Disobeying orders, he tips off his partner, family and closest friends as news about the impending shutdown and compulsory resettlement spreads quickly, causing Danish money to lose value.
The ensuing plot primarily involves stolid Copenhagen architect Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), hoping to relocate to Paris with his new family, and his 19 year-old daughter Laura (Amaryllis August), who is torn between going to the Sorbonne or accompanying her depressive, divorced mother Fanny (Paprika Steen) – Jacob’s ex-wife – to Bucharest, and her boyfriend Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt), who will follow her anywhere although his family is emigrating to Finland.
These are middle-to-upper-class, privileged, white people who have choices – unless, of course, they make impulsive and dumb decisions – at which Jacob and Laura, even Elias, excel. That and the inevitable depletion of their cash reserves leave them in desperate straits as penniless refugees in countries where EU rules do not apply and whose native populations resent their presence.
Written by Bo Hr. Hansen, who mergers personal, plausible dilemmas with issues caused by the global disaster, it’s directed by Thomas Vinterberg, co-founder (with Lars von Trier) of the Dogme95 movement that focuses on storytelling and performance without using elaborate special effects and technology; which involves shooting on-location and using only natural sound for an authentic cinematic experience.
I suspect this story will be remade in English, like Denmark’s “The Bridge” and “The Killing,” and I doubt that there will be a second season since the seventh episode seemingly concludes the central drama.
In Danish and dubbed in English with English subtitles, on the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Families Like Ours” is an apocalyptic 7, streaming on Netflix.
