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DIRECTED BY: Christoffer Boe

FEATURING: Ulrich Thomsen, Helena Christensen, Henning Moritzen

PLOT: An acclaimed pianist returns to Copenhagen in response to the appearance of an impassable no-man’s land that was created when the musician broke up with his girlfriend a decade prior.

COMMENTS: Allegro is a musical term, an instruction to performers to maintain a fast and bright tempo in the range of 120-156 beats per minute. The first movement of Vivaldi’s “Spring” is allegro, as is “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” by Mozart. (Also at allegro tempo: this.) It establishes a bright, bouncy feel, and while allegro tunes don’t have to be happy, there’s something wickedly perverse about lending the term to the title of this slow, methodical look at a musical artist who has removed all flair and personality from his performances and indeed from himself. Surely “Adagio” was sitting right there.

Writer/director Boe hints at the outset that we’re about to be treated to a modern fairy tale. Through recurring sketchbook-style animation, we learn about the early life of our hero, an aspiring concert pianist we will only know by his last name, Zetterstrøm, who grows up to become a technically perfect but emotionally flat musician. This seems like it might change when he has a charming meet-cute with a lovely woman named Andrea. They progress to a relationship, despite his clear reservations, and his wariness seems justified when they break up a while later because of his commitment to his career. Leaving Andrea behind, he becomes a performer whose interpretations hit all their marks perfectly but are devoid of emotional engagement. He is so completely devoted to the purity of his work and so determined to extricate any trace of personality that he does Glenn Gould one better by refusing to be seen as he performs. As one music expert tells us, “He is an excellent pianist, technically… but where is his passion?”

Turns out his passion is in Denmark. I mean, that’s literally where he has deposited all of the distracting impulses that he has purged from his system because they harsh his chill. What Zetterstrøm has done, unbeknownst to him, is compartmentalize all his memories and feelings of the intense relationship into a section of Copenhagen that becomes a closed-off, inaccessible disaster area called “The Zone.” (Locals bounce things off the invisible force field that surrounds The Zone for their amusement.) In short, Allegro is a clever piece of magical realism, making manifest the consequences of locking one’s emotions away.

The idea is compelling when described, but less so in execution. The premise is fantastical, but Boe is so committed to the reality of the situation that he devotes much time to the uninteresting business of getting Zetterstrøm to Copenhagen, getting him into The Zone, and finally getting him to understand the implications of his careless soul-ectomy. Yes, Zetterstrøm has intentionally extracted his heartbroken soul, but as played by Thomsen, he’s a pretty emotionally vacant fellow already. It ends up feeling like the function is following the form, and that rather than exploring this broken psyche by viewing it through the prism of an “Outer Limits”-style no-man’s land, Allegro seems to have come up with the strange storytelling twist and retrofitted a story to occupy it.

It is frustrating how much of Allegro is told and not shown. Zetterstrøm is spoon-fed every clue to unlock his stolen past by Moritzen’s ill-defined narrator/journalist/ringmaster, like the minder overseeing an escape room. Zetterstrøm’s performing ability is delivered to us second-hand. His relationship with Andrea is conveyed quickly through a crafty piece of editing that takes the couple’s relationship from its earliest moments to its sad end, but the technique denies us the opportunity to see the relationship for ourselves. Most tellingly, the film’s final revelation resolving the ramifications of his experience in The Zone, tying together the pianist’s emotional turmoil and his professional acumen, is delivered in voiceover.

Allegro goes hard on its unusual premise, and there are some intriguing camera and set design choices that reflect the scattered and troubled nature of Zetterstrøm’s memories. It’s also to the film’s credit that we invest in his relationship with Andrea (the film debut for former supermodel Christensen) despite how little we see of it. Ultimately, though, an appropriately weird idea does not alone make a weird film, and Allegro never quite makes good on what it promises. Contrary to its title, Allegro doesn’t go fast, and it doesn’t get where it wants to go.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…despite its surreal aspects, [Boe] keeps it real, as if Terry Gilliam had adopted cinema verite.”–Amber Wilkinson, Eye For Film (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Gustaf Ottosson. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)