Queen of Hearts

An exceptional, albeit painful, film that reminds us men aren't the only ones capable of sexual abuse

Thou art my son, I am thy father's wife,

I ache toward thee with a bridal blood,

The pulse is heavy in all my married veins,

My whole face beats, I will feed full of thee,

My body is empty of ease, I will be fed,

I am burnt to the bone with love, thou shalt not go,

I am heartsick, and mine eyelids prick mine eyes,

Thou shalt not sleep nor eat nor say a word

Till thou hast slain me. I am not good to live.

• Algernon Charles Swinburne; "Phædra" (1866)

I was lucky enough to get tickets for the Dronningen [Queen of Hearts] screening at DIFF, where the film was introduced by lead actress Trine Dyrholm. When she returned for a post-screening interview and to receive the 2020 Volta Award, she apologised that she'd been enjoying a nice dinner whilst we'd been watching the movie. And an apology was welcome, not because Dronningen is a bad film, but because it's an exceptionally difficult film – like Adrian Lyne at his most sensationalist, but with all the commercialism stripped out and the morality kept fuzzy. Examining the destructive power of forbidden desire and how sexual abuse can masquerade as consensual seduction, it's a film wherein our protagonist becomes our antagonist, where her initial self-confidence transforms into heartless manipulation, where our emotional centre shifts multiple times, where our own morality is examined, where our sympathies are used against us as we're pushed to condone something abhorrent. A psychologically fascinating and morally complex film, in the age of #MeToo, Dronningen dares to remind us that women can be the perpetrators of abuse just as men can be its victims.

Anne (Dyrholm) and her husband Peter (Magnus Krepper) are an affluent middle-class couple living with their two young daughters on the edge of a forest just outside Copenhagen. Anne is a partner at...