In 2018, Swedish-born director Gustav Möller, who lives and works in Denmark, endeared himself to critics and viewers with his feature debut The Guilty, which played successfully on the festival circuit and in cinemas, and inspired a Netflix-backed remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Six years later, Möller’s sophomore effort Sons shows similar promise, starting with a prestigious competition slot at the Berlinale. Whether it will also beget an American redo for the subtitle-intolerant remains to be seen.
The film is set almost entirely inside a prison, where Eva Hansen works as a guard (hence the original Danish title Vogter). Her daily routine is generally uneventful, the main annoyance being one inmate who occupies the shower for 20 minutes every morning. Then, one day, she requests a transfer to Central Zero, the most dangerous block in the building – the one that houses particularly violent and seemingly irredeemable prisoners.
One such inmate is the recently transferred Mikkel, aka M017. Aged 25, he’s been serving a 16-year sentence for the past five years, extended after he fatally stabbed a fellow prisoner. That prisoner was Simon Hansen, Eva’s estranged son, a detail she’s kept to herself. In fact, it’s the reason she requested the transfer, so she can get some kind of revenge. But how far is she willing to go?
Compared to The Guilty, which was set largely in one room and featured only one main actor on-screen, Möller opens up to a wider world in his second film, although the feeling of a claustrophobic single location sort of remains, since there are very few scenes here are outside the prison. He also reteams with cinematographer Jasper J. Spanning to create a similarly drab look, emphasizing the mundane qualities of the prison guards’ routine, with the conventionally flashier moments, such as a raid in the cells, depicted as jarring disruptions.
Like in the previous film, where the supporting cast consisted of voices on the phone, sound continues to play a pivotal role in conjunction with the right camera angles, especially during a tense meditation scene (Eva runs the prison’s mindfulness classes) that takes Möller’s fascination with off-camera characters to a different, yet similarly eerie place. But that is also an outlier within a movie where direct interactions and two people in frame at the same time are the most crucial ingredient from a dramaturgical standpoint.
In fact, the writing may be less tight this time around, owing to a more clichéd structure in terms of both premise and execution, but the suspense remains thanks to uniformly solid work from the actors, starting with Sidse Babett Knudsen as Eva. A prime example of Scandinavian acting royalty (mere weeks before Sons’ Berlin premiere, she received the Honorary Dragon Award in Möller’s native Gothenburg), she has always relished playing characters with moral gray areas, and throws herself into the part with unabashed gusto.
On the more emerging end of the spectrum, Sebastian Bull (who made his debut as a teenager in Thomas Vinterberg’s Submarino in 2010, and is likely to gain an increased international profile with this project) is a riveting container of bottled-up rage, eliciting fear with his energy and, just as often, via carefully planned shots of his immobile, scarred and tattooed physique. And Dar Salim, who previously worked with Knudsen in the political TV drama Borgen, takes the typically one-note role of the shouty commander of the high-security block and makes it his own, contributing to an ensemble that skillfully elevates the more basic trappings of the screenplay and keeps the tension alive until the very last, powerfully mundane shot.
Director: Gustav Möller
Screenwriters: Gustav Möller, Emil Nygaard Albertsen
Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Sebastian Bull, Dar Salim, Marina Bouras, Olaf Johannessen, Jacob Lohmann, Siir Tilif, Rami Zayat, Mathias Petersen
Producer: Lina Flint
Cinematography: Jasper J. Spanning
Production design: Kristina Kovacs
Costume design: Vibe Knoblauch Hededam
Music: Jon Ekstrand
Sound: Hans Christian Arnt Torp
Production companies: Nordisk Film Production
World sales: Les Films du Losange
Venue: Berlinale (Competition)
In Danish
100 minutes
