A hairdresser who has lost her hair to cancer finds out her husband is having an affair, travels to Italy for her daughter's wedding and meets a widower who still blames the world for the loss of his wife.
If Pierce Brosnan asked you to leave your fat, faithless husband and live with him amongst the orange groves of Italy, would you turn him down? Sadly, that’s the toughest question posed by this romantic bagatelle about a good-hearted hairdresser who charms a grumpy fruit-and-veg tycoon (Brosnan) at their children’s wedding.
Okay, so the plot has a few contrivances and the younger characters aren’t quite as interesting. But if they aren’t, it’s only because P-Bros and Dyrholm are so engaging, with the former effortlessly sliding into the role of an introverted, suit-happy widower while the latter is just impossibly lovely as both a mum and a love interest.
It’s very Mamma Mia! without ABBA meets Under The Tuscan Sun. Sunny, sweet, with a lovely cast, idyllic locations and fruitfully comic situations. Pleasingly endearing.
The relationship is not dramatically absorbing or emotionally satisfying and the plot meanders. However, the diverting scenery and Dyroholm’s dignified performance provide some compensation.
Love Is All You Need plays it safe, right down to the change of title – in Denmark it was called "The Bald Hairdresser" (not great either) – but as a draught of cinematic Ovaltine it goes down quite agreeably.
As with nearly all of her films, Bier deals mostly in stereotypes and clunky ironies here, and yet she still manages to inject it with enough feeling to make it palatable.
Pacing aside, this really is quite delightful.
Love Is All You Need is predictable without being manipulative, sweet without being sentimental, and as inconsequential but life-affirming as a holiday romance should be.
Summer's here!
Manipulative and simplistic, but undoubtedly an enjoyable ride.
Love Is All You Need was shot broadly in line with the Danish Dogme commandments: cameras should be hand-held, light should be natural, locations should be real. That Scandinavian clarity of vision and emotion, mellowed by rosy sunsets and rosé, is what makes Bier’s film such a refreshing getaway from the rom-com humdrum.
It looks weirdly like a romcom pastiche, not cynical, but not properly inhabited; it doesn't taste of romance or comedy any more than Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup cans taste of soup.
All we’re left with is a tourist office fetish of rustic Italian life which, with eternal montages of lapping waves, crying gulls and sun-kissed lemon groves, willfully tries to market itself as delightful and heartwarming, but ends up being neither.
When Brosnan and Dyrholm stroll through the lemon groves abutting his Sorrento villa, they don't stray too far from Mamma Mia! territory, but they're sufficiently battered and bruised to seem like human beings we can care about, an impression deepened by the film's unhurried pacing and post-Dogme handheld camerawork.
The characters are familiar social types, none too well conceived, and there is an almost painful lack of subtlety in the writing and performances, possibly because most of the script is in English. There is little electricity or chemistry between Dyrholm and Brosnan, and the overall effects suggest a combination of two family films with Scandinavian connections, Festen without the cruelty and Mamma Mia! without the music.
Susanne Bier: 'You can't be ashamed of big emotions if you make movies'
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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