04/02/2022 - Danish filmmaker Marianne Blicher makes a confident debut with an audience-pleasing story of an unlikely friendship between two women decades apart

Ragnhild Kaasgaard and Isabella Møller Hansen in Miss Viborg

Danish director Marianne Blicher's first feature, Miss Viborg [+see also:
trailer
interview: Marianne Blicher
film profile], which has world-premiered in the Göteborg Film Festival’s Nordic Light section, tells the story of an unlikely friendship that could only take place after the first decade of the 21st century. Solvej (theatre actress Ragnhild Kaasgaard in her first film role) is a grumpy, overweight, 61-year-old woman living in the social housing area of the small town of Viborg, Denmark, where she was once the beauty queen. Driving around town on her mobility scooter with her dog named after an actor popular 50 years ago, she illegally sells her prescription drugs, saving up the money for a timeshare in Málaga.

When her next-door neighbour, teenager Kate (Isabella Møller Hansen in her first feature film), breaks in via the balcony in an attempt to steal Solvej's drugs (the lady “doesn't sell to kids”), she accidentally hurts her ankle and also drops her phone – this is how the film's hero realises who the mystery burglar was. But Solvej lives in a different era – reading “slide to open” on the screen, she tries pushing the phone over her kitchen counter.

This brings them together in a mistrustful deal, in which the dynamic girl helps the lady, who is now struggling to even use crutches, expand her market in exchange for 50% of the profit. Here, we see a chink start to appear in the lady's rock-hard armour, and in a lovely scene, she even organises a little celebration with cake for the 18th birthday of the girl, who is in a conflicted relationship with her mother. In turn, Kate secretly sets her up for a date with a lorry driver, the gentle Preben (Kristian Halken), who will turn out to be, well, the driver of inevitable change when a falling out takes place between Kate and Solvej.

Blicher sets up the film as a collision of two worlds, heavily tinged with the nostalgia that Solvej lives in: the picture opens with a Danish rendition of “Everybody Loves Somebody”, the main theme of the score also being based on the song. It is contrasted with Millennial Kate's rebelliousness that is, naturally, a mask to cover up insecurities – and a hip-hop track accompanies a music montage depicting them doing business together.

The journey that the two go on is a well-trodden path of getting to know oneself and inevitable transformation into a better person. Some suspension of disbelief will be required for the audience to accept that an 18-year-old girl could spend two days without her phone and not completely freak out, but the tone of the film is more whimsical and modern fairy tale-like than realistic.

This vibe is created through bright colours both in the interiors and in the sun-drenched exteriors, Solvej's album with black-and-white photos of better times and the trucker radio, through which she learns about the outside world that she never dared venture into, as well as the choice of instruments for the score (bells, vibraphone and accordion).

Even though a tad too sentimental, Miss Viborg is an accomplished, audience-orientated film that puts Blicher on the map as a confident debutante, as well as the remarkable Hansen and the late-career breakthrough Kaasgaard. It was co-produced by Denmark's Snowglobe and Argentina's REI CINE. Totem Films is in charge of its international sales.