‘Home Sweet Home’ review: Subdued Danish care worker drama stars Jette Søndergaard

Dir/scr: Frelle Petersen. Denmark. 2024. 112mins

Single mom Sofie (Jette Søndergaard) begins a brand new job as a house carer for the aged. It’s difficult work, however she takes to it instantly: her purchasers reply warmly to her, she feels a satisfying swell of fulfilment within the information that she has made a distinction. However the work is all-consuming and, following a malicious criticism by the daughter of a affected person, Sofie retreats into herself, on the expense of her relationship together with her 10-year-old daughter, Clara (Mimi Bræmer Dueholm). The fourth movie from Danish director Frelle Petersen is unflinching in its depiction of each the job and the toll it takes on those that select to do it. 

 Seems to be past the humiliations of growing older

This isn’t the primary time that Petersen has examined the price of caring. His 2019 Tokyo Grand Prix successful image Uncle took a equally empathetic and understated take a look at the connection between a younger girl and the ailing uncle she has lived with since her teenagers. That movie shared a lead actress in Søndergaard, Petersen’s common collaborator (she additionally starred in his most up-to-date image, Without end, which premiered at San Sebastian.) House Candy House isn’t breaking new floor, however there’s an unshowy, measured intelligence at play right here that ought to win followers at additional festivals, and presumably catch the attention of distributors or streamers in search of high quality, grown up dramas. 

Petersen as soon as once more units the story in rural Southern Jutland, in Denmark, the place he was born and raised – particularly the small city of Tonder (the place most of the non-professional solid have been recruited). However not like his earlier movies, House Candy House doesn’t spend a lot time respiration within the scenic panorama of the area. Because the title suggests, the movie primarily performs out inside the partitions of varied properties. Just like the aged purchasers whose horizons have been whittled down by infirmity, we hardly ever get to see the world exterior.

The whistlestop care visits from Sofie and her colleagues present extra than simply medical assist and meals – they’re a hyperlink to a wider society that has left them behind. And this, Sofie shortly realises, is a key a part of the position, though it isn’t one thing for which her jobsworth administrator budgets time. Petersen has an eye fixed for poignant little particulars, just like the hopeful plate of desserts and pot of espresso laid out by the lonely spouse of Sofie’s dementia affected person.

Isolation and involuntary estrangement are themes that run by the story. And it’s witnessing her purchasers’ starvation for the crumbs of contact that she offers, as a lot because the stress of the criticism, that begins to interrupt Sofie’s spirit. She aches on the loneliness of Else (Karen Tygesen), who hardly ever sees her son and her grandchildren and stoically ploughs by 3000-piece jigsaws to fill the void. And he or she displays on the fraying connections inside her family: her mom, whose Zoom calls are dominated by a cavorting new pet; her mutinous daughter, who begrudges the truth that she should share Sofie together with her new job and who exhibits it in the one manner that 10-year-old is aware of how – by pushing her mom away. 

The isolation of growing older isn’t the one indignity that Petersen explores. The movie refuses to look away in the case of the bodily realities of Sofie’s job. On the primary go to of her first day, she finds herself dressing a stoma, by the top of the shift she is grappling with dirty grownup diapers. The squeamish might discover a few of this difficult to take, however Petersen’s unsensational lens doesn’t search to shock. Slightly, like Sofie and different devoted professionals, the movie appears past the humiliations of ageing and encourages us to see the folks, their humour and resilience, relatively than the frail, failing our bodies.