Though her most recent film was the winsome rom com Love is All You Need, director Susanne Bier is best known for her grave, weighty dramas like Brothers, After the Wedding, and the Oscar-winning In a Better World.
Bier returns to her dark roots in A Second Chance, a drama about a cop who steals a healthy baby from a violent, junkie couple. He believes he’s doing the right thing — how well can the drug-addled parents take care of an infant, he figures. But when he’s assigned to investigate the baby’s disappearance, he’s soon forced to accuse the devastated pair of murdering their child. Meanwhile, his wife comes to love the baby as her own, and when faced with the possibility of losing him, threatens to commit suicide.
Wrenching material, yes, but with Bier’s humanistic vision and sensitive storytelling, Another Chance looks like another masterpiece from the Danish auteur.
A Second Chance will have its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival.
