Heartbound – Heartbound: A Different Kind of Love Story (2018)

Directed by: Janus Metz, Sine Plambech | 90 minutes | documentary

“There are 926 Thai women living here” we read in the first minute of ‘Heartbound’, while a gray Danish landscape can be seen in the background. These women might never have been here were it not for Thai matchmaker Sommai. This experience expert met her Danish husband Niels 25 years ago in a Thai prostitution area. Since then she has been very successful in bringing poor Thai women and lonely Danish men together. Anyone who has already made up their mind about this kind of arranged marriages should definitely give this film a chance.

With ‘Heartbound’, Januz Metz (‘Armadillo’, ‘Borg/McEnroe’) and his wife Sine Plambech have succeeded in sketching a moving and intimate portrait without passing judgment on a considerably sensitive subject. We meet a number of sympathetic and colorful Thai women and the touching Danish men also show their vulnerable side. Metz and Plambech followed four of these couples for ten years and take us on a rollercoaster of dreams and setbacks.

In the beginning of ‘Heartbound’ it is not entirely clear if there are time jumps, as you would expect that, knowing that they have been filming for ten years. This only becomes clearer halfway through the film, when we suddenly go seven years into the future and the outdated images give way to a cinematic pleasure for the eye. In particular, the images of teenage son Mark, who was brought to Denmark by mother Kae as a small boy from Thailand, look so slick that it almost feels staged.

Fortunately, after the first half of the film, in which the characters seem to create a kind of dream world, space is made – just in time – for the flip side of the fairy tale. As a viewer you need this. Although the Danish men are not portrayed as perverts and the women as “golddiggers”, you realize all too well that the motivations of the women mainly stem from a hopeless existence in Thailand. Yet the film shows that genuine love can also arise from such a somewhat contrived bond and it doesn’t matter where you come from or where you live. Life and death will always be there.

‘Heartbound’ is a loving film that gives you the chance to rethink your prejudices. In the end, few things really matter in life and maybe that’s simply loving the people around you.