Allegro

Since childhood, world-class concert pianist Zetterstrom (Ulrich Thomsen) has resisted imperfection, eccentricity and uncertainty in any form. He allows unpredictability into his life only once, in the form of Andrea (Helena Christensen), the love of his life. But it doesn't last — their differences start the slow slide to estrangement, but the last straw is Zetterstrom's objectively precise, emotionally devastating answer to the question, "Do you know I love you?" The devastating end of the affair shatters his faith in love; he sweeps Andrea from his mind and moves to New York, continuing his ascent to the top of the concert world despite increasingly eccentric demands in the name of everything that could distract from the pure experience of music. Zetterstrom begins to play from behind screens, and he requires the audience to wear blindfolds. Zetterstrom has no idea that his breakup with Andrea triggered an interdimensional catastrophe that tore off a three-block chunk of Copenhagen — including the street where Andrea and Zetterstrom lived — from the rest of the city, turning it into a dark zone surrounded by a humming electrical field. Ten years later, a stranger named Tom (Henning Moritzen) entices Zetterstrom back to Copenhagen by telling him his memories are trapped in what authorities have dubbed "The Zone." Nonsense, says Zetterstrom, until Tom needles him into admitting that he doesn't remember a thing that predates the last decade. And without those memories to counteract his inborn rigidity, some vital fire is slowly ebbing out of his playing. So Zetterstrom reluctantly braves The Zone, where streets shift unpredictably, inexplicable occurrences wait around dark corners, and Zetterstrom's secrets, including the whole truth of what happened the night he and Andrea parted, forever await.

Part art-house meditation and part Euro-sci-fi brain-bender — think STALKER or the original SOLARIS — this seductively dreamy oddity is driven by the astringent notion that love changes us profoundly for the better — where better means richer and more complex, not necessarily happier — precisely because it hurts. Spare, elegant and tailor-made for intense discussions over dark coffee, Boe's film is a slily bold and delightfully inventive variation on an age-old theme. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh