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THE SUBSTITUTE (VIKAREN) 2008 - Review by Elaine Lamkin

September 7th, 2009

THE SUBSTITUTE

Directed by Ole Bornedal

Written by Ole Bornedal and

Henrik Prip

(Review contains spoilers!)

I had to watch this Danish film twice to make sure I was correct in my initial reaction to it. This film, about a substitute teacher (actually a chicken farmer’s wife who is infected, almost “SLiTHER”-style, by an alien spore) and her wary class of 6^th graders is freakin’ hilarious!!

When Ulla Harms (the delightful and delightfully named Paprika Steen) shows up to sub for a teacher who has come down with salmonella poisoning, the students are horrified at how she insults the kids: one boy has buck teeth – she tells him to correct something on the blackboard but be careful not to trip over his teeth on the way. And when she finds something funny, there is no holding back her mirth – she guffaws almost to the point where someone REALLY needs to slap her or she will piddle on herself.

One of her students, the withdrawn and picked-upon Carl (Jonas Wandschneider) who lost his mother recently in a car accident, starts to notice things about Ulla that just don’t add up. How she read his mind in class, how she knew every student’s name without consulting any sort of seating chart, how she just…knew everything (the students started quizzing her with complex math equations which she promptly answered, adding “Everyone knows that.”). During recess, Carl sees Ulla standing in front of a window, completely “switched-off”. Oooeeeeoooo!!

Other strange things occur when things aren’t going Ulla’s way – her first day in class, the students are fighting when every single one of their cell phones go off plus she has the ability to change what comes out of a student’s mouth, if it’s an insult to Ulla. My favorite was when poor Albert of the teeth (Jakob Fals Nygaard) tries to call Ulla a “cruel monster” and it kept coming out as “cool hamster”.

At a hastily called parent-teacher meeting, when Ulla is running late, Carl observes her with her satchel and a strange large silver ball. And what he sees that ball do… Well, you will just have to check this movie out.

The children gather the courage to break into Ulla’s home which is deserted, unlived-in, with huge piles of broken furniture in every room. While there, Ulla returns home and the students manage to avoid her until she decides to have some “lunch”. The kids run screaming from her house. Of course, later that evening when the students are tyring to get their parents to understand what they saw, the parents decide to pay Ulla a visit and, naturally, the house is immaculate and beautifully decorated. Carl’s friend, Philip (Nikolaj Falkenberg-Klok) even whispers to Carl that he knew this would happen.

Slowly, the parents of the students come to adore Ulla and in a particularly hilarious scene, after the 6^th graders have earned a trip to Paris with their crazy teacher, it is every 6^th grader for themself, fighting getting on the bus, fighting their parents – you just have to see it. Everyone calms down, though, when Carl’s father, Jesper (Ulrich Thomsen) announces that since the original bus driver was sick from salmonella poisoning (detecting a pattern here?) and Jesper knows how to drive a bus, the students reluctantly board the bus but the shots of them with their faces pressed to the windows, saying “goodbye” to their parents is also funny – they act as though they are “walking the Green Mile”.

I could tell you a LOT more about this little gem of a movie: the mysterious map Carl finds, the ooga-booga moment Carl has when Ulla comes to have dinner with him and his father (who Ulla seems to have designs on), Ulla’s family’s past and the REAL reason Ulla is there, as well as the final scene between Ulla and Carl and a “pressing machine” at the chicken farm, but you should really enjoy it without too many spoilers. Very funny with some unexpected scares, very original and Ulla can be downright creepy. And then there are the chickens…

One word of advice: I have read several viewer complaints about how badly dubbed this movie is. Well, a simple solution to THAT “problem” is, when setting up the film, click on Danish Dolby instead of English Dolby and you will get an undubbed film with English subtitles. Problem solved,

Review by Elaine Lamkin

August 2009

Entry Filed under: Film Reviews