Sweet Dreams (2003)
Skagerrak is the story of being hit by happiness when you least expect it. In their late twenties and tired of partying their way around the world, Danish Marie and Irish Sophie come ashore in Northern Scotland. After another drunken night they are soon parted from all their accumulated cash. Out of money and out of luck ambitious Sophie pressures Marie into accepting a lucrative job as surrogate mother. Months on, Marie finds herself alone, life having taken a dramatic turn. Heavily pregnant, and wanting to terminate her pregnancy, she's on the run from the future parents, searching for Sophie's old flame, Ken. In a case of mistaken identity, Marie ends up in hiding with three strange men in a seedy Glasgow garage. But then happiness strikes again.
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Simply Perfect
Better than most people think
What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
For a little known obscure movie, it is one of my all time favourites. My sister recommended it to me many years ago. I have watched it a few times a year ever since. It makes me laugh and cry every time I watch it. I have a total girl crush on Iben, what a doll and so natural in front of the camera. The girl just isn't enough stuff! Bronagh Gallagher as the quirky and lovable Sophie. The hilarious rapport between Ewen Bremner, Gary Lewis, and Simon McBurney..so funny. The Glasgow touch just melts my heart. It's a sad and loving story about two friends...OK maybe a "girl movie" but touching all the same. Two friends falling on hard times after working their arses off on a ship. Trying to get their lives out of the shite but poor Marie is left all alone when Sophie has an accident. Marie's search for a connection with her lost friend is touching. The men she meets along the way are funny, conniving and lovable all at the same time. A hidden gem in my opinion.
Marie and Sophie work the fishing boats, going from one job to another. They get paid and move into a Scottish hotel for a few weeks R&R before getting back to work. When Marie is approached by well off land owner Robert with the offer of money if she has a baby with his son (who's own wife is unable to conceive). After much to-ing and fro-ing Marie agrees to do it and gets pregnant. However when Sophie dies, Marie is left alone and changes her mind and goes looking for help.Marie's dream is of family and a nice home, a dream that seems far off with her wild lifestyle of going from port to port with her friend Sophie working the boats for enough money to hold them until the next job. This film appears to lack focus because it makes you think it will be an emotionally story focused on the baby, whereas really Marie is the focus and her baby is only one of the things that happen to her. In this regard the film does tend to wander, replacing emotional events with actual ones, meaning that the film feels like it is just going somewhere for the sake of going somewhere. It still has emotional involvement because Marie is a good focus but her life events over 9 months just seem too far fetched and unlikely in comparison to the story I expected from the first 20 minutes.A big reason it works is the performance of Hjejle; she has a very difficult character and, while she doesn't manage to make it totally real, she does enough to engage the audience in her story. Henderson is OK but has a strange character that the script just moves around as it required. The support cast of Scottish actors are quite enjoyable including faces such as the ever-present Cosmo as well as Gary Lewis and McBurney. Gallagher does reasonably well but is secondary to the film in terms of focus, also she doesn't have enough to work with to really distinguish her from some of her other `rough Irish lass' performances.Overall this is an interesting film thanks mostly to a performance by Hjejle that holds the material together better than it deserves. It doesn't have a great heart to it and wanders too far at times in terms of events but it is still worth seeing despite never really being totally convincing.
I guess this film failed to get significant, if any, distribution to cinemas. I wondered whether to bother setting the vcr. It was worth it! McBurney was tops for me plus a cameo for (the now late) Russell Hunter at the funeral. Multi-cultural mayhem. Raises disturbing questions about the good films we miss because they are not flavour of the year.
I didnt expect much but was pleasantly surprised by this offering. An unusual film but keeps you interested right up to the end which has a most unexpected twist. Always good to see Helen Baxendale, however, she really isn't in the film that much........