Reconstruction (2004)

"It is a film. Everything is constructed. Still it hurts."

So begins Reconstruction (2004), a little gem of a puzzle of a movie. Alex meets Aimee one night in a bar, and cheats on his girlfriend Simone with her. Aimee's husband August is a novelist frantically trying to finish his book. Whether and which characters may or may not be characters in the book, and how their lives intersect is the subject of the film. But the subject of the film is also the film itself, or rather, the craft of storytelling, compiling and rearranging timelines and consequences. It's a compelling movie, short and sweet, haunting and provoking.

Nikolaj Lie Kaas is sexy and enigmatic as Alex, caught between two worlds. Maria Bonnevie playing both the girlfriend and the wife, the faithful and the adulterer, is lovely, made more so by Manuel Alberto Claro's atmospheric and sultry cinematography, and lots of smoke.

I've added director Christoffer Boe's Allego to my netflix queue.