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“They close the country.” The words are both clear and inconceivable. In one year, Denmark will no longer exist. Presented on the edge of the ruin by increasing sea level, the terrestrial area of the nation must be evacuated and abandoned, its people left at the mercy of the other states.
It is the premise of Families love OursA piece of ambitious and provocative speculative fiction that arrives at the BBC after having already done move in Denmark. Created and produced by the filmmaker Thomas Vintberg, the series in seven parts imagines a catastrophic climate crisis scenario for one of the most stable and richest societies in the world. Although white and in many rich cases, its citizens are now considered by their European colleagues as a burden; Their neighbors do not close their borders and restrict movement rights.
Although it may seem extremely dystopian, the drama is firmly rooted in a sober direction of realism which makes the hypothetical all too plausible. The country does not suddenly or violently collapse but is dismantled by the bureaucracy which dictates where people are moved and when. We hear rumbles of protest, but mainly see quest for permit and queues for ferries carrying the population in shelters of refugees across Europe. The fear of what will come to compete with sorrow for what has been lost – from personal comfort to national culture.
Directed under a sweet Scandinavian sun rather than by an apocalyptic deluge, the evacuations seem alarmist, but of course, they are the result of an emergency too long neglected. Ecological warnings serve as a backdrop for the drama led by the character of a middle -class Copenhagen family merging the emotional and logistical difficulties of being uprooted.
In the center, Laura, 19 years old (amaryllis August), who is not only taken between adolescence and adulthood, but between the people she loves. While his father architect Stolid Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) obtained a visa in Paris, his mother Fanny (Paprika Steen), an ex-journalist in difficulty, is only offered asylum in a Romanian building. Complicating things in addition is the flourishing relationship of Laura with classmate Elias (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). Faced with impossible choices that follow, she makes reckless decisions that lead her into the hands of people who attack desperate migrants.
After an absorbent and elegiac start, the series becomes more sinky while the family is divided through Europe and struggles to find security or compassion. The overall story is stimulating and affecting, but the individual sub -intrigues are not always suitable. The novel element is laborious and too much from the series is shaped by improbable impulses without attention.
Ventterberg's decision to focus on a family means that we get a narrow point of view of what is put in place as a national disaster – even a world -. But as the title suggests, the objective is to cut people who identify with the characters but feel far from the trials of real migrants. Here, we are strongly faced with the precarious privilege and the speed with which we can go from the leafy suburbs to the smuggler's ship.
★★★★ ☆
BBC4 and Iplayer on May 3 at 9 p.m.
