A Soap/En Soap (2006) - P. Christensen's great melodrama debut

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+ Best Copenhagen Movie of the Year + Best LGBT Movie of the Year + Best Melodrama of the Year

The delicious, pink poster for Penille Fischer Christensen's A Soap

QUICK REVIEW:

In a block in Nordvest, Copenhagen, Charlotte (Trine Dyrholm (Love Is All You Need/Den Skaldede Frisør (2012))) moves into a flat atop Veronica (David Dencik (Daisy Diamond (2007))), a pre-op transgender person, and the two gradually get closer and start to attract each other.

A Soap, the feature debut of great Danish co-writer-director Pernille Fischer Christensen (Someone You Love/En Du Elsker (2014)), is a really good, deeply melancholic film. It seeks boundaries and at times may make you uncomfortable. By demonstratively relegating a melodrama to us, using narration, the film transcends its earthbound base. A Soap, in a sense, shows us that life is a bagatelle, - a soap.
Christensen co-wrote with Kim Fupz Aakeson (In Order of Disappearence/Kraftidioten (2014)).

Related posts:

 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

David Dencik in Pernille Fischer Christensen's A Soap

 In lieu of a trailer for the film, which isn't on Youtube currently, here's a trailer for a more recent Fischer film, A Family/En Familie (2010) (which is far from the quality of A Soap) with English subtitles

Cost: 1.5 mil. $ 
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty (but looks like a huge flop)
[A Soap was released April 7 (Denmark) and runs 104 minutes. At the Berlin Film Festival, the film won the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award and the Best First Feature Film Award. At the Danish Bodil awards, the film won the Best Danish Film of the Year award as well as the Best Actress Award for Dyrholm, her third up to that point. 29,060 paid admission (accounting for approximately 0.3 mil. $) to A Soap in its native Denmark, which is so few that it should likely count as a huge flop theatrically. The international figures available, from the US (where it played in 2 theaters for 8 weeks, making 4k $), Brazil, Mexico and Portugal, add 145k $ to the number, still firmly setting the film in the huge flop category. 1,649 Rotten Tomatoes users have given A Soap an average 3.6/5 rating.]

What do you think of A Soap?