"It takes a baffling, almost bone-headed premise, the stuff of schlocky genre movies, and from it creates a mesmerizing, visually gorgeous and often-moving alloy of family drama, philosophical meditation and anti-golfing tract," writes the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu. Kirsten Dunst "is Justine, an advertising copywriter who's about to get married (to a sweet, but rather out-of-his depth chap played Alexander Skarsgård) at a remote and lavish castle. The wedding has been organized by her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland), but quickly slides into a Festen-style nearest-and-dearest disaster: Justine's parents (John Hurt, obsessed with women called Betty, and a deliciously citric Charlotte Rampling) don't get on; her arrogant boss (Stellan Skarsgård) is trying to conduct business; she herself, when she's not crying or holding up proceedings by taking leisurely baths, has sex with a stranger on the estate's golf course. Justine suffers from depression, almost a pathetic fallacy seeing that a planet called Melancholia is heading for a collision course with Earth within days."
Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.
