Nicolas Bro Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘A Taste of Hunger,’ starring Katrine Greis-Rosenthal and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

March 5, 2022

by Carla Hay

Katrine Greis-Rosenthal and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in “A Taste of Hunger” (Photo by Henrik Ohsten/Magnolia Pictures)

Directed by Christoffer Boe (also known as Mr. Boe)

Danish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Copenhagen, Demark, the dramatic film “A Taste of Hunger” features an all-white cast representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A husband and a wife, who own a successful upscale restaurant, have their marriage put at risk when someone anonymously sends a note revealing the wife’s extramarital affair.

Culture Audience: “A Taste of Hunger” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching relationship dramas that have mystery and intrigue.

Flora Augusta and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in “A Taste of Hunger” (Photo by Henrik Ohsten/Magnolia Pictures)

Even though “A Taste of Hunger” centers on a couple who own a restaurant together, the movie is really about what people will do to achieve their definition of success, and how ambition can turn into an unquenchable obsession. It’s a well-acted and thoughtfully written story with plenty of suspense and mystery over who is trying to ruin the marriage of the movie’s central couple. “A Taste of Hunger” shows in nuanced ways how a type-written note is really a symptom, not the catalyst, of this couple’s problems.

Christoffer Boe (also known as Mr. Boe) directed “A Taste of Hunger” and co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Tobias Lindholm. The movie takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark, and doesn’t waste time showing that someone wants to expose infidelity in the marriage of successful restaurateurs Maggie (played by Katrine Greis-Rosenthal) and Carsten (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who co-own a sleek, upscale restaurant called Malus. Maggie is the restaurant manager, while Carsten is the executive chef.

The movie opens by showing Maggie and Carsten in a seemingly happy and passionate marriage. One evening, while the restaurant is closed, they discuss an elaborate decoration that they plan to put display at one of the restaurant tables that’s meant to be showstopper at the center of the restaurant. Later, Maggie and Carsten meet up at a bar. She tells him seductively, “I really crave dick when I’ve had whiskey sour.” Viewers later find out that this comment about whiskey sour is a foreplay joke for the couple, and it’s a comment that’s mentioned more than once throughout the movie.

While on this date, Maggie and Carsten are in their car, and they have an amorous moment where she’s about to give him oral sex. But then, they get a call from a restaurant employee that there’s a man dining by himself who could be a Michelin reviewer, based on his actions during this meal. There’s been a rumor going around the Copenhagen restaurant scene that a reviewer for the prestigious Michelin Guide has recently been dining at restaurants in the city.

Michelin reviewers, whose identities are supposed to be a secret, tend to dine alone and pay in cash, so Maggie and Carsten assume that this customer is probably a Michelin reviewer. By the time they get to the restaurant, the diner has left. All the information that Maggie and Carsten have is a vague description of what he looks like. And even then, it’s not absolute proof that he’s a Michelin reviewer.

Just like many restaurateurs, Maggie and Carsten dream of having a restaurant that gets a Michelin star. Getting one Michelin star is considered a worthy accomplishment. Getting two Michelin stars makes a restaurant even more prestigious. Getting three Michelin stars (the highest rating) is the ultimate endorsement that’s reserved for restaurants that are considered the best of the best. Over the course of the movie, Maggie and Carsten’s ambition to get a Michelin star affects their actions in how they handle their business and their personal lives.

While Maggie and Carsten seem to be doing well with their restaurant and their marriage, their marriage is actually in trouble. An anonymous person is seen typing something on a computer: “Your wife loves someone else.” One day when Maggie is at the restaurant, she sees a stack of mail with a folded note on top. The note, which address to Carsten, was not sent through a postal service because there’s no envelope, mailing address or stamp for the note. The note was placed there by someone who had access to the restaurant and knew where the mail was kept.

Even though the note is addressed to Carsten, Maggie opens up the folded paper to read the note. And that’s when she sees the words that horrify her: “Your wife loves someone else.” Someone knows about her secret affair and wants to tell Carsten. This threat to expose the affair comes at a bad time because Carsten and Maggie are about to be interviewed for a high-profile article about them and the success of Malus.

In addition, Carsten and Maggie desperately want to get a Michelin star for the restaurant. Maggie knows that an infidelity scandal could ruin the image that they’ve carefully crafted for themselves and the restaurant. And so, for most of the movie, Maggie tries to find out who sent that note before that person can find another way to expose Maggie’s infidelity.

On the surface, this story seems like it could just be enough for a short film. However, “A Taste of Hunger,” which is told in a non-linear way, shows a lot of flashbacks to give background information on how Maggie and Carsten met, fell in love, got married, started a family, and decided to open their own restaurant. The editing of this backstory is done in such an engrossing way that it won’t confuse or bore viewers. The flashbacks (which also reveal the identity of Maggie’s lover) put the present-day situation of Maggie and Carsten in better context so viewers have a better understanding of why the stakes are so high for this couple.

Maggie and Carsten met when she was at a house party, and Carsten was a caterer chef in the kitchen. At the time, Carsten and his older brother Torben (played by Nicolas Bro) co-owned a small catering business, but the two brothers often clashed with other in decision making. For example, at this party, Torben is upset and yelling at Carsten because they agreed to the client’s request to serve sushi with “normal” rice and lots of chili mayonnaise. However, Carsten served something else that was in season.

In order not to upset the client, Torben orders a halt on what was about to be served to the guests, and he decides to go out and buy the necessary ingredients for the menu that the client requested. In the meantime, the party guests are waiting for food to be served. That’s why Maggie goes to the kitchen to see what’s going on and witnesses this angry dispute between Torben and Carsten.

Torben is also angry because he has to buy more food than expected, so the catering company will lose money on this party job. In order to save money, Torben orders Carsten to dismiss the two or three catering assistants who were hired to help at this party. Carsten apologetically tells the assistants that they will get paid for the time that they served, but he says it in a way that’s not very believable.

Maggie is a little inebriated when she first meets Carsten in the kitchen. When she strikes up a somewhat flirtatious conversation with him, there’s an instant mutual attraction. Maggie likes how Carsten seems to be a visionary chef who has his own ideas of what should be on a menu. She’s also a foodie, but she’s more interested in restaurant management than in being a chef.

Maggie knows that the party guests will eventually expect to be served food, so she offers to help. She suggests that drinks should be served in the meantime, so she helps Carsten make some drinks since she has experience as a bartender. They decide to make whiskey sour for the guests. It’s in this scene that viewers find out why whiskey sour has become a playful inside joke for Maggie and Carsten.

Carsten and Maggie quickly bond during this kitchen encounter. He opens up to her about his former mentor, a restaurant chef named Stellan (played by Dag Malmberg), whom Carsten worked with for 10 years until Stellan fired Carsten because Carsten wouldn’t follow Stellan’s orders. However, Carsten still has tremendous respect for Stellan, and he proudly shows Maggie a carving knife that Stellan gave to Carsten as a gift. Maggie sees that Carsten has an independent streak, so she tells Carsten that he’s too good to be a caterer and should be the chef of his own restaurant.

Some parts of Maggie and Carsten’s life are left out of the flashbacks, such as their wedding and the births of their two children. In the present day, Maggie and Carsten’s children are daughter Chloe (played by Flora Augusta), who’s about 7 or 8 years old, and son August (played by August Vinkel), who’s about 4 or 5 years old. Chloe likes to watch her father work in the kitchen and is perceptive and curious. However, August seems to be the favored child in the family. Maggie and Carsten think that August is pretty much close to perfect.

Of course, there came a point when Carsten and Torben agreed to no longer work together, but their brotherly relationship is still solid. Their catering company also went out of business, and Torben moved on to doing something else with his life. Some scenes in the movie show Carsten and Maggie having family get-togethers with Torben and his wife Pia (played by Maj-Britt Mathiesen) and their respective children.

In the present-day, Carsten is shown to be an almost stereotypical hard-driving chef, who will praise the staff when he’s satisfied with their service, but he doesn’t hesitate to belittle and humiliate his employees if he thinks they aren’t meeting his high standards. An early scene in the movie shows Carsten has a nasty temper. He’s yelling at the kitchen staff because a meal was sent back by a customer. Carsten tastes the meal and finds out it has over-fermented lemons. He throws a plate and shouts, “What is this shit?”

Carsten demands to know who’s responsible for over-fermented lemons being served to a customer. An employee named Frank (played by Rasmus Hammerich) sheepishly admits that he didn’t taste the meal before it was sent out to the customer. Carsten immediately fires Frank in front of the rest of the staff. Carsten later informs the staff that a Michelin reviewer could be in the restaurant at any time and that there better not be any more mistakes. “A Taste of Hunger” shows other signs that Carsten has become a workaholic at the expense of his personal relationships.

Meanwhile, the movie throws in some additional drama over a health concern of Maggie’s where she has to gets testing done for this health issue and finds out the results from a doctor. Flashbacks also show Carsten’s interactions with his former mentor Stellan. And when Carsten became a restaurateur, Carsten was a mentor to a sous chef named Frederik (played by Charlie Gustafsson), who’s in his early-to-mid-20s. Frederik no longer works at Malus and is currently working at another restaurant.

“A Taste of Hunger” has a few twists and turns to the story. However, since the movie already establishes from the beginning that whoever left the note has some type of access to the restaurant area where the mail is kept, the list of possible suspects is very short. Still, when it’s revealed who typed the note and delivered it, this person’s identity might be surprising to a lot of viewers.

All of the movie’s cast members give believable performances, but Greis-Rosenthal is the standout because she has to show the most emotional range out of all the characters. It’s because Maggie is the one who has to “keep up appearances” while frantically trying to find out who wrote the note and if that person will do something else to expose the affair—all while feeling pressure over the possibility that Malus is going to be reviewed by Michelin. Maggie shows that she’s willing to go to certain extremes to hide her secrets, so her character is unpredictable, in terms of what she will do next.

There are certain parts of the movie where Maggie tries to find out the identity of the Michelin reviewer. Maggie’s search for the Michelien reviewer is actually one of the few weak aspects of the movie. Michelin reviewers go to great lengths to keep their identities secret and would deny being a reviewer if confronted by an over-eager person who has a vested interest in getting a positive review. Maggie should know this already, but it doesn’t stop her from wasting a lot of time trying to find the reviewer in Copenhagen.

As for Maggie trying to find out who wrote the exposé note about her affair, she immediately suspects that the lover in her extramarital affair is responsible for the note, but this person denies sending the note when Maggie confronts this person. Maggie becomes increasingly agitated and paranoid about finding out who wants to expose the affair. Regardless of who sent the note, Maggie experiences a reckoning where she has to face the harsh reality of why she cheated on Carsten in the first place.

In addition to being a stylish-looking film—the movie’s production design of Malus is gorgeous, as is any scene involving the display of restaurant food—”A Taste of Hunger” offers an insightful dissection and observation of a marriage that looks strong and healthy on the outside but is troubled and crumbling on the inside. On a deeper level, the movie also effectively shows that when people get everything that they think they want in life, it doesn’t always make them happy. Viewers of the movie should watch for the end-credits scene, which gives the story’s conclusion a different tone than what was shown before the end credits.

Magnolia Pictures released “A Taste of Hunger” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on January 28, 2022.

Review: ‘Riders of Justice,’ starring Mads Mikkelsen

June 2, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Riders of Justice”

Directed by Anders Thomas Jensen

Danish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed cities in Denmark, the dramatic film “Riders of Justice” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few characters of Egyptian heritage) representing the middle-class and the criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A grieving widower, whose wife died in a train crash, teams up with three strangers to get revenge on the gang that they believe is responsible for the explosion.

Culture Audience: “Riders of Justice” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted and slightly quirky revenge stories that have unpredictable twists and turns.

Pictured clockwise, from bottom left: Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt, Gustav Lindh, Lars Brygmann, Andrea Heick Gadeberg and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in “Riders of Justice” (Photo by Rolf Konow/Magnet Releasing)

The usual clichés of vigilante dramas get a sly and occasionally far-fetched treatment in “Riders of Justice,” which is about coping with grief as much as it is about getting revenge. Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, the movie sometimes veers into being a satire. But at its core, “Riders of Justice” is a mostly somber meditation on what can happen when trauma is left untreated.

The movie opens in Tallinn, Estonia, where an elderly man and his niece (played by Marta Riisalu) are looking at a red bicycle to buy as a possible Christmas gift. The niece says that she would prefer a blue bicycle, so the niece and uncle leave without buying the bike. Wanting to make an eventual sale to these potential customers, in case they come back, the bicycle shop owner (played by Kaspar Velberg) makes a call to an unknown person.

The next scene is somewhere in Denmark, where two men wearing hoodies step out of a white van. There’s a blue bicycle chained at a train station. The men break the chain and steal the bicycle, which they put in the van and drive off. It’s soon revealed that this blue bicycle belongs to a girl named Mathilde Hansen (played by Andrea Heick Gadeberg), who’s about 15 or 16 years old.

Mathilde lives with her mother Emma Hansen (played by Anne Birgitte Lind), while Emma’s husband/Mathilde’s father Markus Hansen (played by Mads Mikkelsen) is serving in the Danish military in the Afghanistan War. (This movie takes place before 2014, when Denmark withdrew from the war.) One day, Markus calls his family to tell them that the military has ordered him to stay in Afghanistan for three more months. Emma tells Markus that Mathilde’s bike has been stolen.

Mathilde has this reaction when she hears that her father Markus will be staying in Afghanistan longer than expected: “At least he won’t be sitting in the barn, staring into space like a vegetable.” It’s the first indication that Markus might have some issues with his mental health and that there’s tension in his relationship with Mathilde. Not much is shown about Markus and Emma’s marriage, but it appears to be a solid relationship.

The next day, when Emma is about to go to work and take Mathilde to school, the car won’t start. And so, Mathilde and Emma decide to take the train instead. In the mid-afternoon, when Mathilde and Emma are about to go home together, the train is fairly crowded, and a man politely offers Emma his seat. His name is Otto Hoffman (played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas), and he is a nerdy statistician who has recently given an ill-received presentation to an automobile manufacturing company about which demographics are most likely to buy certain car brands.

On the train, a major tragedy happens when the train derails and crashes into a parked freight train. In total, 11 people die in the crash. Emma is one of the deceased. Markus gets the news and rushes home from Afghanistan. Based on what happens later in the movie, it’s implied that a grieving Markus requested an honorable discharge from the military because he has to take care of Mathilde as a widower with no one else who can help him with childcare.

Emma’s death has devastated Markus and Mathilde, but they have very different ways of coping. Mathilde wants to talk about her grief and possibly get therapy, but Markus has the opposite reaction. Mathilde is open to finding some religious and spiritual comfort for her sadness, while Markus is a staunch athiest. Markus and Mathilde don’t even agree on when she should go back to school, because when she’s ready to go back, Markus thinks she should stay at home.

Adding to the tension, Markus doesn’t really approve of Mathilde’s teenage boyfriend Sirius (played by Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt), because he thinks Sirius is too emotionally sensitive and wimpy. Markus and Mathilde’s relationship, which was already troubled before Emma’s death, starts to get worse. They argue and can’t seem to agree on much because they are both stubborn in their beliefs. When Mathilde tells Markus that she misses her mother, Markus’ idea of comforting his daughter is to tell Mathilde: “You might as well learn now that unless you die at a young age, you will end up burying most of the people you love.”

During all of this family angst, it’s been reported on the news that two of the people who died in the train crash were former gang member John “Eagle” Ulrichsen and his attorney. Eagle had been scheduled to testify in court against his former gang called Riders of Justice, in a Kaalund Street murder case that killed four Turkish men. The leader of Riders of Justice is Kurt “Tandem” Olesen (played by Roland Møller), who is facing the most serious charges in the murder case because he is accused of being the mastermind of these killings.

Authorities have determined that the train crash was an accident. However, statistician Otto has calculated that the odds are next to impossible that it was an accident. He remembers seeing a suspicious-looking male passenger on the train. The man exited the train at the station that the train went to before the train derailed.

Otto doesn’t think it’s a coincidence. He begins to suspect that the train was tampered with, in order to kill Eagle, who was the star witness in the Kaalund Street Murder case. Otto takes his suspicions to the police, but two officers who listen to Otto’s theory don’t take him seriously at all. The cops are not impressed with Otto’s statistic that there was a 1 in 234, 287, 121 chance that the train crash was an accident.

Because he’s not willing to let go of his suspicions, Otto finds out more about Eagle and discovers that the former gang member was a creature of habit who always sat in the same train seat and he frequented a gym called Fitness World. Otto asks an eccentric colleague of his named Lennart Nielsen to hack into the Fitness World surveillance video system to prove that Eagle was obsessive compulsive with his routines. Otto and Lennart also get video surveillance footage from the train station to get a closer look at the man whom Otto suspects was involved in planning the train crash.

It isn’t long before Lennart gets caught up in this conspiracy theory too. Because the authorities have officially ruled the train crash an accident and the police don’t think it’s worth any further investigations, Otto and Lennart decide to visit Markus to tell him their theory. They’ve never met Markus before, but Emma’s name was reported in the news media as one of the train crash victims. Otto and Lennart were able to find out her address through computer database searches.

Otto also wants to visit Markus because Otto feels “survivor’s guilt” that Emma was in the seat that he offered to her on the train. And because Otto thinks the train crash was intentionally rigged, Otto also wants to see if Markus wants to help in this investigation over who might be responsible. When Otto and Lennart show up at Markus’ place, Markus’ reaction to the conspiracy theory is skeptical, to say the least. Markus somewhat gruffly sends Otto and Lennart away.

Undeterred in their mission, Otto and Lennart enlist the help of their former colleague Ulf Emmenthaler (played by Nicolas Bro), who’s an expert computer hacker, to use still images from the train video surveillance to get a photo of the “suspect.” Emmenthaler (who doesn’t like to be called Ulf) has facial recognition software that Otto and Lennart want Emmenthaler to use to find out who this mystery man is. At first, hot-tempered Emmenthaler thinks it’s a waste of time. But Otto and Lennart persist in asking Emmenthaler to help them, and he eventually does.

The only result for the facial recognition match, with a 99% certainty, is for a 38-year-old clinical dental technician named Aharon Nahas Shadid, who lives in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. Otto can’t believe that the person they’re looking for lives in Cairo. He asks Emmenthaler to lower the probability match to 95% certainty to see if there will be a match to anyone who lives in Denmark.

Sure enough, the match also comes back to a man named Palle Olesen (played by Omar Shargawi), who happens to be the brother of Riders of Justice gang leader Kurt “Tandem” Olesen. And when the three amateur sleuths find out that Palle has an electrical engineering background, it’s further information that they think points to Palle as being the one to rig the train so that it would derail. Otto takes this information to Markus, who is now convinced of this conspiracy theory too.

It isn’t long before Markus, Otto, Lennart and Emmenthalar show up unannounced at Palle Olesen’s house to confront him. They arrive together in Markus’ car. An argument breaks out, Palle pulls a gun on the four men, and Markus kills Palle by breaking his neck. (This isn’t spoiler information, since it’s in the “Riders of Justice” trailer.)

Palle’s murder was not planned in advance, so when it happens, there’s some panic among the four men. Lennart is the most paranoid about leaving behind any DNA or other evidence, so he insists on cleaning up before they leave. The other three men wait in the car. They’re all in various levels of shock over what just happened.

While cleaning up inside the house, Lennart sees a naked young man, who is bound, gagged and bent over on the arm of a couch. It’s clear that this man, who is in his 20s, witnessed the murder and was being held captive by Palle for some kind of sexual activity. Lennart and this mystery man make eye contact, and the expressions on their faces indicate that they both know exactly what this witness saw.

Lennart decides not to do anything about this witness and leaves him still bound and gagged in the house. But it won’t be the last time that this vigilante quartet will see this witness. His name is Bodashka Lytvynenko (played by Gustav Lindh), he’s a Ukrainian immigrant, and his story is eventually revealed in the movie.

The rest of “Riders of Justice” is about how the four men react to the murder by deciding they’re going to kill the rest of the Riders of Justice gang. Markus is the one who comes up with this idea, and he convinces the others to help him. What would drive these four previous law-abiding citizens to go on this vigilante rampage? It’s shown in various parts of the movie that all four men are emotionally damaged in some way.

Markus has the most obvious motive to go on this revenge killing spree, but there were hints that he was becoming mentally unhinged before Emma died. Mathilde (who does not know about Palle’s murder and this vigilante plan) senses that something is very wrong with her father, and she thinks that Markus needs therapy, but he refuses. And it turns out that Otto, Lennart and Emmenthaler (who are all bachelors) used to work at the same company and all got fired around the same time.

Otto has a tragedy from his past that left him unable to use his right arm. Lennart is still dealing with trauma from his childhood, when he was abused by his father. Emmenthaler has a lot of pent-up rage against people he perceives as bullies, because he has been bullied and mistreated for much of his life.

Markus and his three cronies use the barn on his property as the headquarters for their planning. It isn’t long before computer whiz Emmenthaler has the barn decked out with all kinds of computer hacking equipment. The four men also use Markus’ property for target practice with their guns.

Otto, Lennart and Emmenthaler spend so much time with Markus on his property that Mathilde gets suspicious. Emmenthaler and Lennart spontaneously lie to Mathilde and say that they are therapists and they have been meeting with Markus for grief counseling. Mathilde is thrilled that Markus is getting therapy, so she asks Emmenthaler and Lennart if they can give her counseling her too. Emmenthaler says that he only treats adults, but Lennart says that he can help Mathilde.

In reality, Lennart has no training as a psychiatrist. But privately, it’s mentioned that he’s been to so many psychiatrists in his life, he feels like he knows all the right lingo to say in a therapy session. Lennart’s lie to Mathilde leads to a comedic subplot where he starts giving her psychiatric “therapy.” Mathilde and Lennart become so attached to each other, Lennart practically acts like her uncle. Mathilde prefers to spend time with Lennart more than her father Markus.

The dark comedy of “Riders of Justice” is most prominent when it shows the unexpected and odd surrogate family that forms as a result of these four men’s vigilante goals. Markus appears to be the most cold and calculating of the four, but he’s like a ticking time bomb. As for the murder trial that star witness Eagle was going to testify in against his former gang cronies, the outcome of that trial is mentioned in the movie. This outcome is also a catalyst for much of the action in the story.

Some elements of “Riders of Justice” are very predictable, while others are not. Viewers will have to suspend disbelief at some of the shootout scenes, where police don’t show up when they would in real life. Markus, Otto, Lennart and Emmenthaler also don’t make any effort to hide or disguise their faces when they start killing people—and that carelessness doesn’t make sense when they spend so much time meticulously planning other aspects of their crimes.

These plot holes can be excused because the movie’s main attraction is to see how these three men came into Markus’ life and awakened something in him that makes him feel alive and purposeful again, for better or worse. All of the cast members do well in their roles, but Mikkelsen is the most riveting to watch because his Markus character doesn’t express his emotions easily, so his character is at times the most unpredictable.

“Riders of Justice” doesn’t glorify violence, nor does it make vigilantism look glamorous. Nielsen’s directing and screenwriting achieves a hard-to-balance dichotomy of juxtaposing Markus’ double life, with gritty assassination scenes followed by “wholesome” family scenes. The real story in “Riders of Justice” isn’t how many of the gang members are killed but what kind of emotional toll this revenge mission takes on the vigilantes who decided the only way to get justice is through murder.

Magnolia Pictures’ Magnet Releasing released “Riders of Justice” in New York City and Los Angeles on May 14, 2021. The movie’s release expanded to more U.S. cities and on digital and VOD on May 21, 2021. The movie was released in Denmark and Mexico in 2020.