15, 88 mins
Like his striking debut Reconstruction, in which a man wakes up after an affair to find that no one knows who he is, the Danish director Christoffer Boe conjures up another tale of memory and loss. A technically brilliant but passionless pianist (a broodingly uptight Ulrich Thomsen) returns to his native Copenhagen and “the zone”, an inexplicable bubble in the city that can reclaim his banished memories, which include the break-up with his lover and muse (the model Helena Christensen) that left him emotionally numb. Its mix of chilly visuals and child-like drawings make it feel like Alice in Wonderland directed by Andrei Tarkovsky but it remains a little too emotionally distant, with an all-knowing narrator adding to the film’s airless quality.
IAN JOHNS