Jeanette Nordahl’s “Beginnings” opens with the fallout between a couple. Ane (Trine Dyrholm) and Thomas’ (David Dencik) marriage has run into a stalemate. Thomas is dating a colleague, Stine. The couple going through the rift haven’t discussed with their daughters, Clara and Marie, his moving out yet. Thomas and Stine are working on having a place of their own.
A professor, Ane’s life is ruptured when she has a stroke at home. There’s a blood clot in her brain, leaving the left side of her body paralyzed. Ashen, she processes information that she will never get back to complete normalcy. But she learns not to lose her mettle though the immediate devastation demands much from her. She has to gather her shattered self and proceed, unbent.
Shouldering it all is Trine Dyrholm in a commanding, flawed, and desperately, visceral human performance. We see Ane’s mounting exasperation, taking out her helplessness on her children and being aware of her snapping temper. As someone fiercely independent confronted with spiraling control, her relationship with Thomas shifts. When we enter the film, things between the couple are bitter and have hit a prickly dead end. With Ane’s physical vulnerability urgent, Thomas delays his moving, staying back till she gets in better shape. Neither does he inform the children of Stine, who are left hanging.
Ane is exasperated and seething, grappling with the loss of complete physical autonomy. Dyrholm’s performance is full of frailties and renegotiating the limit of one’s vulnerability. With the intrusive force of unexpected circumstances, relationships move through a churn. Everything goes for a toss. The family has to reckon with the sudden development and be patient, forgiving, and understanding in every sensitivity to Ane. It’s like they are on eggshells with her. They have to tread lightly, and cautiously. When Clara (Bjørk Storm), training in gymnast classes, casually complains about not finding balance, it immediately provokes Ane. The latter turns incensed and vicious, lashing out for an inadvertent remark, seeing it as a mockery to herself. She views it all as a personal affront, an attack.
Ane also comes to terms with aspects of herself, a deeper strength and resilience she may not have known otherwise. We observe her rebuilding herself through the swimming classes. Her journey is painful, riddled with gnawing doubt and uncertainty. In the initial aftermath of the stroke, she’s cold and hurtful, struggling to accept her stunted mobility. She’s now reliant, against her will, on her family, and her husband to look into every daily need.
However, she’s quick to assert her immense conviction and unshakable agency. She’ll not have others dent her spirit or sense of self. It’s beyond anyone’s meddling or invasion. The force of being she felt she had returned in a newer form, revitalized and reanimated. She regains confidence and resolves to seize life, sure of her sense of dignity and independence.
“Beginnings” fumbles in threading the perspectives of the daughters. Obviously, they are going through a lot. They have also discovered their father’s affair. Their resentments and grudges flare occasionally in the narrative but largely the film inexplicably shunts them. Yes, Ane and her daughters reconfigure the parent-child dynamic of nurturer and cared for. But “Beginnings” treats this thread in repetitive, dull motion. There are too many gymnast scenes that don’t add to the film and should have been snipped.
It’s as if Nordahl is unsure of how to weave it in. Neither does Stine even register as a presence. Instead, the film keeps switching to Ane, held in good stead by Dyrholm. She firmly anchors the film, but there’s an undeniable narrowness to the larger vision, the frays and reconciliations and hard truths within the family barely accruing any solid emotional punch. “Beginnings” meanders and wavers in stitching a compelling family portrait nevertheless it gains truth and force as long as Ane stays at the center. Dencik is also effective as a man who has long evaded tough decisions but has to finally make one. The film bursts vividly to life when it circles the two in moments of sporadic joy, a coming together, and ultimate, inescapable confrontation.
