Simple premise, unpredictable execution

Alright, I take back everything I ever said about Pierce Brosnan. Well, almost everything. He still looks impossibly good in a suit, way better than anybody ought to look.

But he catches me up in Love Is All You Need and takes me with him without a lot of extra effort. The story of Brosnan’s first wife dying a somewhat protracted death from cancer and his loyalty to her memory is fairly well-known and he is playing off of that experience in this film. In the best possible way. The fact that we know that about him makes him much more truly vulnerable than he often is. It also makes him harder, nastier, and blinder to those around him, which also works.

The film’s story is this: A woman – the truly magnificent Trine Dyrholm – who has just finished chemo for breast cancer and appears to be cured comes home early and discovers her husband in flagrante delicto with “Thilde from the office” on the couch in the living room. They were supposed to go to their daughter’s wedding in Sorrento, Italy. She goes alone.

At the airport she literally runs into the father of the groom – Brosnan, a widower and lonely owner of a import produce company. It is on the verge of being a Hollywood “meet cute” but it works much better because they are mature people and it is a very real inconvenience to both of them. They end up traveling together all the way to the cliffside villa where the wedding is being held. By the time they get there they like each other even less. A lot of very funny and surprising things happen before they finally get to the wedding so I won’t spoil it. But it is all charming and moving. Especially Brosnan, probably because he is working opposite a woman who is really a wonderful actress and he has the good sense to respect her.

In many ways this is one more in a long line of “getting married” movies, but it seems to be a bit more than that, perhaps because the majority of the cast is Danish and subsequently is unknown to me, and I am pleasantly surprised by Brosnan, from whom I expect very little. I find the film unpredictable and honest, really uncomfortable at times and very moving at others – when people see and speak the truth to each other finally after being polite way too long.

Love Is All You Need opens Friday, May 31, at the beautiful Oriental Theater on Farwell.