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Denmark, Belgium, Norway · 2021
1h 40m
Director Bille August
Starring Birthe Neumann, Simon Bennebjerg, Nanna Skaarup Voss, Asta August
Genre Drama
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Broken down, author Karen Blixen returns to Denmark, where she meets and develops a friendship with Thorkild Bjørnvig, a young and promising poet. Together they make a pact: she promises to make him a great artist in return for his unconditional obedience, whatever the price.
While The Pact may sound overly sinister to some, August extracts ample nuance out of the cast, ensuring we’re never left without sympathy for Karen. The film’s success hinges upon Neumann’s calculated performance, and she gives the role the requisite amount of ambiguity, keeping the audience guessing as to her true motivations.
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
Deftly mounted, shot and scored, The Pact is a master class in ensemble acting, led by Neumann in a visceral, deeply layered and knife‘s-edge turn.
This well-dressed midcentury period piece keeps teasing a darker, more perverse take on a familiar story of cross-generational creative mentorship. Yet despite a performance of unnerving severity by Birthe Neumann as the rancorous Blixen, the film remains too polite and light on incident to deliver on that promise.
The New York Times by Lisa Kennedy
Neumann’s baroness is grandiose and transfixing (as are Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen’s handsome costumes).
The film is masterful in exploring the kinetic energy between its leads, even in the most subdued scenes. The Pact is a slow burn, but one feels the heat the whole time.
RogerEbert.com by Peter Sobczynski
The Pact starts off on an intriguing note and has some moments when it does work (especially the ones involving Grete), but while it's theoretically filled with dark psychological underpinnings, it seems oddly reticent to deal with them in any significant way.
A riveting homage to an extraordinary force as dynamic as she was unique.
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