The Elite/Eliten (2015) - Introspect, cringe-worthy youth debut

♥♥

Lead Nikolaj Bæk bares much of himself on the poster for Thomas Daneskov's The Elite

Our young writer protagonist inherits his vegetated father's lake villa and moves there with a group of like-minded 'artist' friends, who indulge in drugs, alcohol and sex without any clear purpose.

The same could be said of The Elite, which seems like an attempt at making a generational portrait in the vein of Jonas Elmer's great Let's Get Lost (1997). But the film is too slight in its construction to come even close to the quality of the aforementioned work. The Elite is half-baked at best. It is written by Emil Nygaard Albertsen (In Darkness/I Mørke (2015), short)) and feature-debuting co-writer-director Thomas Daneskov (Ud, Spring Over, Ind (2013), short).
The actors and crew behind it have obviously jumped at the chance to make it, and lead actor Nikolaj Bæk (Sjit Happens (2015), TV-series, lighting technician) isn't without talent. There is a little bit of fun to be had in this portrait, but just as much of it is cringe-worthy, and relatively empty scenes are drawn out beyond justification. The young, self-proclaimed artists that we meet here are remarkably uninventive, unfunny, not liberated and inelegant, which all grates with their high estimation of themselves. Few but themselves could be interested in their tame shenanigans.
SPOILER The Elite ends abruptly, as if in the middle of a sentence. Alas and alack.

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2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Here is a video of Daneskov accepting his award for the film at the CPH Pix festival

Cost: 1.5 mil. DKK, equal to approximately 0,225 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (but certainly counts as a mega-flop)
[The Elite premiered 10 April (CPH Pix Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark) and runs 80 minutes. The film only screened at CPH Pix and so cannot have made nearly any money at all. It was not released in any other countries. It has been shown on Danish TV. It won a CPH Pix New Talent Award and was nominated for an Audience Award at the Robert Awards (Danish Oscars). - Ironic, since nearly no-one has seen it. 90 IMDb-users have given The Elite a 6.2/10 average rating.]

What do you think of The Elite?