Allegro (2005)

hyped garbage

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Either a person who does not understand any bit from the film, or a person who has a personal antagonism against the director can write that sort of a comment. Sorry, but this is, definitely, not fair...Although the film is indeed has some progressive aspects, it cannot be evaluated as an "Art Cracked." Actually quite down-to earth story, and it is as real as anyone can face with a truth he/she had lost in his/her past as Zetterström is going through within the film.The "poor acting" critique is another issue. It is a part of the symbolism the director is using within film. (I don't want to tell here about the story.)The film is a must, not only for the ones within industry, but for anyone.

The Danish film, "Allegro," is that rare science fiction film that uses only the barest minimum of special effects to tell its story (a slight wrinkle in the picture is about as high tech as the filmmakers are willing to go). Instead, the fantasy and surrealism play out almost exclusively in that far more intriguing venue known as the Theater of the Mind.Zetterstrom (well played by Ulrich Thomsen, who appeared in the excellent "Brothers" a few years back) is a concert pianist who has never been able to find true happiness in his life, even after he's met and formed a relationship with Andrea (Helena Christensen), the supposed woman of his dreams. Zetterstrom may be a brilliant musician, but he suffers from an innate distrust of other people, including those who are nearest and dearest to him. When Andrea decides to up and leave him virtually without warning, Zetterstrom imposes a form of amnesia on himself that effectively wipes out all memory of his life prior to her departure. At the same time - and this is where things really get strange - the section of Copenhagen where he was born and raised undergoes a bizarre transformation, suddenly becoming cut off from the rest of the world by some inexplicable supernatural force. Though no one can physically enter this area - now officially re-named The Zone - Zetterstrom is determined to force his way in, when, after ten years of not being able to recall his past, he begins to suspect that his memories may actually be residing in that mysterious place.Needless to say, this is not your average science fiction movie, nor is it your average tale of lost love. But by combining these two usually distinct genres into a single story, director and co-writer (with Mikael Wulff) Christopher Boe has come up with a work that is both thought-provoking and haunting in its otherworldly strangeness. Zetterstrom wanders through the maze of this "pseudo" city like one in a trance or a dream, searching for clues to his forgotten past and trying to figure out the identity of the strange woman (Andrea) who flits in and out of the shadows of his imagination.The message of this strange little parable seems to be that even the most tragic events of our lives make up a crucial part of who we are - and that any effort to dull the pain of those events by tucking them away in a corner far out of reach of our memory only winds up diminishing us as a person in the end. Zetterstrom learns that lesson the hard way, but at least he does learn it. It reflects well on the filmmakers that they've presented their case in as uniquely fanciful and absorbing a way as they have in "Allegro."

I think one of the biggest challenges all the filmmakers of the world have to confront is transforming a good idea into a solid and entertaining movie.I think that thing almost destroys Allegro,which starts with an ingenious idea,but the film has difficulty in keeping it interesting in 88 minutes.I think the concept behind this movie would have worked better in a short.The main idea behind this movie has been used in The Twilight Zone and that idea totally fixed in 30 minutes.With some differences,we see that idea in almost one hour and a half of running time and,in spite of that,director Cristoffer Boe shows some good scenes and an excellent visual presentation but the film gets a little bit boring and,on some moments,I felt it was going nowhere.The ending is good,but for landing on that,we had to see redundant scenes and some tedious moments.Allegro had an ingenious idea and I totally appreciated that.But the film found difficulty to develop it and there are some tedious scenes.I can recommend it without too much confidence.

This film is one of the most over explaining and clumsy symbolic films I have seen in a very long time. It is simply straight out boring because it tries to be so "mysterious" all the time, but in fact it is quite a simple and unoriginal story. They are just trying to make it more interesting by using a lot of very heavy symbolism, instead of going in depth with the real story or the characters. It's very superficial and film school like. And almost everybody in the cinema were either sleeping or leaving before the film finished. And I wished I had done the same after wards. I just kept on thinking that something would happen. But it just didn't.Also the fact that Helena Christensen really can not act, even though she is very beautiful, is a big problem for the film. Being a photo model is obviously something very different from being an actress. It seems like the director just wished a beautiful face instead of a real character, and that is maybe more or less the problem of the whole film. It's not like for example a David Lynch film where you can feel that the mystery comes from something real. Something that the film maker actually knows something about.