After the sprawling uncertainties of the American-set Serena (which languished for years in post-production hell), Susanne Bier returns to Denmark for this modern-day Greek tragedy about infant death and changeling children. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is rugged detective Andreas whose idyllic home life (loving wife, newborn baby) provides stark counterpoint to his beastly beat. When a domestic disturbance call reveals a shocking case of infant neglect, Andreas instinctively connects this babe’s plight with his own son’s safety, tapping into a grief-stricken madness that soon engulfs his life.
While the performances are solid enough to make early scenes of parental anguish almost unbearable, screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen’s overwrought, morbid thriller narrative pushes the catalogue of baby-swaps and suicides into the realms of farcical incredulity. Bier describes A Second Chance as “almost like a morality tale” that “confron[s] our core notions that some people are better than others, some people are more right than others”. The notions are lofty and the players sincere, but the film itself is fatally overcooked.
