EYE WEEKLY - review

EYE WEEKLY

The Art of Crying (Four stars)

w/ Jannik Lorenzen, Jesper Asholt
Sep 9, 6pm, Paramount; Sep 11, 3:15pm, Cumberland; Sep 15, 4:45pm, Varsity
Despite its horrific scenes of familial dysfunction, The Art of Crying is often hysterically funny. Of course, the laughs are of the dark and bitter variety, a Danish specialty. An 11-year-old living with his family in a small town in the early ’70s, Allan (Jannik Lorenzen) is far too admiring of his milkman father Henry (Jesper Asholt), an egocentric monster who tyrannizes his family with his volatile moods and pathetic self-pity. Eschewing the clichés of cinema’s countless bad dads, Asholt and first-time director Peter Schonau Fog create a patriarch who’s plausibly awful, comically absurd and thoroughly memorable. JA
Run Time 106 mins.
Director Peter Schønau Fog
Program Discovery

Stars given in Eye Weekly