Lest anyone think that the measured performances in Borgen, The Bridge and The Killing or the personal cinema of, say, Susanne Bier, Pernille Fischer Christensen, Lars von Trier or Thomas Vinterberg define Danish drama, along comes the British release of Klown, a film which – despite a few local touches – plays to the familiar: the uncomfortable comedy of The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the gross-out, road-trip fare of The Hangover.
Like the first The Hangover film, Klown hinges on an arrested-development male presented with a scenario where he ought to commit to his girlfriend. He discovers she's pregnant and hits the road. There are drink and drugs. Instead of encountering a baby, his entire journey is accompanied by a 12-year-old boy.
So far, so familiar. Klown goes further and lower, though. The doltish Frank (played by Frank Hvam) wants to demonstrate to his girlfriend that he is father material, but sets off on a pre-planned trip with his vain and stupid friend Casper (Casper Christensen, pictured above in the lead). Frank kidnaps 12-year-old Bo (Marcuz Jess Petersen) and takes him along as the tool to show his dad-readiness. En route, Casper – who wants this to be the "tour-de-pussy" – is anally raped and Frank insets his finger in the same orifice of a woman they’ve encountered while Casper has sex with her. The pair become fascinated with, and constantly return to, the size of Bo’s penis which gets an outing towards the end of the film. A busload of teenage school kids offers Casper an opportunity to flex his charms. The naïve Frank swallows the advice that masturbating and then ejaculating over his girlfriend while she is asleep will be welcomed by her on waking as a demonstration of his love – not a plot spoiler, as this scenario does not eventuate.
The barely funny Klown is base and unsubtle, as was no doubt intended to be the case. It plunges below the depths America has plumbed with this stuff. The Hollywood remake is already planned (how is a pre-teen's penis going to be dealt with?) and Sasha Baron Cohen has approached Christensen and Hvam to write his next film, The Lesbian. The Danish duo are hardly neophytes. They are stars in Denmark: the version of themselves seen had ploughed pretty much the same furrow on Danish TV with six series of Klown from 2005 to 2009. This follow-up film was released in 2010 and has taken surprisingly long to reach British cinemas. Its production company is Lars von Trier’s Zentropa, and Klown bears some relation to his The Idiots where sex-fixated adults also pretended to be challenged (pictured left, Frank reaps what he sows in Klown).
Beyond being an elongated curriculum vitae and containing the odd funny moment, Klown merits some attention when it plays with the local. Underberg, a Danish herbal alcoholic drink, is frequently necked. Most bizarrely, the pianist Bent Fabricius-Bjerre, who scored the world-wide hit “Alley Cat” as Bent Fabric in 1962, appears as himself. He owns a brothel stuffed with Asian prostitutes. The royalties must have ceased coming in.
Despite the odd surprises and clunky grossness Klown is, at heart, a conservative and unambitious film – women in relationships are to be escaped from, while woman who aren’t are to be chased. Neither Casper nor Frank is particularly likeable. Inexplicably, it has been a festival hit and picked up awards. See it and laugh three or four times, but don’t expect much more than the familiar with – so to speak – knobs on.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Klown
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