At only 38 years old and with only two full-length movies, Michael Noer gives a try to a complicated theme with an impressive maturity. Under the eye of the Danish director, the old age and the illness seem to look like a new woman. We rediscover the foolishness and the pleasures inherent to teenage years thanks to a very convincing duet of actors. The movie goes further comparing two ethic : a traditional one (the one of Lily's daughter) and Lily's who does not care about traditions and relies more on happiness instead of moral codes. Noer gives also a very optimistic view on illness and gets rid of this perpetual cliché of the retirement house, a place where old people are supposedly not happy. In the end, Key House Mirror, despite its classic structure, offers an outcome, a story and characters that definitely buck the trend of the stereotypical image we can have from such an environment and slice of life. With Key House Mirror, Michael Noer rises above the themes of its two previous movies and offers an emotional roller-coaster : a bit funny, a bit sad but always moving. Full review on our blog Los Indiscretos : https://losindiscretos.org
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robertlilja-8338813 April 2018Sweet movie about getting old. Ghita Nørby is as usually a fantastic actress! 80 years old in this picture!
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The slightly mystifying title refers to the Random Words memory test the central figure has to undergo in Danish.
Subject: MARRAKESH FILM REVIEWS Ghita Norby Rocks at Eighty in KEY HOUSE MIRROR By Alex Deleon (Filmfestivals.com)
Danish film entitled, KEY HOUSE MIRROR (Nøgle Hus Spejl) viewed at Colisée cinema, Gueliz, Marrakesh, Friday night, December 11. Director Michael Noe: starring Ghita Norby and Sven Wollter.
This is an amazing small budget Danish film the sly subject of which is a love affair in an old age home starring great Danish actress Ghita Norby as a women whose husband has become a living vegetable in love with another senior who still has some lead in his pencil.
Lily, pushing eighty, takes up residence in the old age home to be with her totally incapacitated husband. However, in the home she meets a retired Swedish airlines pilot, who has shaky hands from Parkinsons disease but a sunny outgoing personality and a jaunty outlook on life. Lily falls in love with big beefy Max (Sven Wolkter) and literally seduces him. She has had no sex for years with her paralyzed husband and is sex starved as well as generally starved for intimate connectivity.
We see some remarkable Senior Citizen love making (in bedroom shadow but they are actually nude and copulating!) -- Which leads to family complications when, at the traditional Xmas family reunion, Lily reveals to her daughter (also the devoted daughter of paralyzed aged Eric, propped up on a seat but totally out of if like a zombie) -- that she has fallen in love with a man she has met at the home --and from there this tale suddenly takes off -- with a subtle slam bang. Starting out like an innocent visit to an old age home in Copenhagen but ending up as a tangled elderly love affair and heavyweight family drama when Lily is herself diagnosed as being in the early stages of Dementia and starts becoming forgetful ... however she has planned a dream-of-a-lifetime trip to Paris with beefy shaky lover Max -- buys the tickets and is determined to go through with this late in life honeymoon, no matter what -- On the sound track a extremely decelerated version of Dean Martin's "I Love Paris" is heard over and over again ... "In the morning, in the evening ---because my love is near ..." -- as if the recording itself is suffering from old age!
Danish top star actress Ghita Norby (born 1935!). Is utterly amaaaaazing in this picture -- surprisingly the best movie Of the entire week I saw here at the Marrakesh film festival -- and one of the most breathtaking female performances I have ever seen anywhere! Not to be missed if you can find it. Required viewing for people over Eighty and strongly suggested viewing for those under eighty who aspire to reach this venerable age -- not to mention film buffs of all ages who appreciate and relish sensitive savvy ingeniously realistic acting -- So real in fact, that Norby turns this seemingly simple low key tale into a breathtaking thriller -- which I don't think many actresses her age would be capable of doing. An acting Master Class and a thrill to watch. -
This is one of the strongest movies I've ever seen that deals with old age and dementia. The film deals with several important topics, but what makes the strongest impression is how tough it is to be deprived of opportunities and dreams. Ghita Nørby is wonderful as Lily, a woman who has moved into a nursing home with her physically ill and reduced husband. We follow her sickness closely. She manages to bring out all the challenges of being old and losing control of her own life. This film should be curriculum at all nursery schools.
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JvH487 June 2015Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2015 (IFFR). Actually, there are two plots, an unexpected surprise given the running time of only 91 minutes. In the first half of the film we observe how Lilly lives in the nursing home as partner of husband Max, who is the real reason they moved in there. It is clear that Lilly is too healthy for a nursing home, but she had no choice. Thus no surprise that we see a growing love between Lilly and neighbor Erik. As could be expected, this is a relationship being frowned upon by others living in the same nursing house, as well as by her daughter. That other residents gave her dark looks can be easily explained, given that women are a majority there hence a bit of jealousy is evident. Her daughter may have good reasons of her own, fearing that Lilly will decide to separate from Max with whom she lost contact some time ago, due to his illness hardly responding to outside events. Initially, resisting both type of "frowners" seemed to be the main story line. It is a relevant theme with its own merits, and could have been sufficient the fill up the whole running time.
However, somewhere halfway we see an 180 degree turn in the story line. Lilly suffers memory problems, something that her daughter already knew for some time. The title "Key House Mirror" refers to a memory test we see failing Lilly on. Of course, she herself does not believe it. Though Max is still alive and present, he becomes less prominent in the story. Lilly gets more and more focus, and also Erik but to a lesser extent. It took some time before Lilly gets convinced that she really has problems with her memory. A hefty scene at the family's former summer house is a turning point for her.
What struck me most in this movie were the scenes in the nursing home. We observe the cosiness in organized form that is upheld for the people living there. It is a daunting preview on our own destiny, in the inevitable years that we cannot take care of our own pastime ways to fill our day anymore, and we may need physical help for each and every move. In the final Q&A we learned that most people we saw in the nursing home were playing themselves. At least 1/3 of the venue (all 372 seats booked) stayed for the Q&A, which is an unusually high fraction. A consensus opinion of those present during the Q&A, apparently people who had personal experience with elderly people, was their spontaneous confirmation that the way these people moved, and the look in their eyes, was true to reality. I consider this an achievement in itself.
From the same film maker I saw Northwest (2013). I wrote very positively about it at the time. This new film proves that he can again arrive at a compelling product, albeit within a very different environment and a very different plot. This time we see normal community members rather than the underbelly of our society. Both times he made extensive use of non-professional actors around the main protagonists. From the Q&A after Northwest I remember this being his standard operating procedure, more of less coming from a past as a documentary maker.