Off screen (2006)

Directed by: Christoffer Boe | 93 minutes | drama, horror, romance, thriller | Actors: Nicolas Bro, Lene Maria Christensen, Karen Margrethe Bjerre, Christoffer Boe, Jakob Cedergren, Trine Dyrholm

Ultra low-budget film ‘Offscreen’, by Danish filmmaker Christopher Boe, presents itself as a kind of ‘Blair Witch Project’, with a similar statement at the beginning of the film to show that this is really real video material, a third has been found and is now being shown to the public unaltered. The opening statement is that the (disappeared?) creator of the film, Nicolas Bro, “must have wanted the film to be made. Otherwise he would have turned off the camera.”

And the whole problem is that Nicolas just won’t turn off that damn camera. Supposedly he wants to make a movie about love, but he turns out to be just obsessed with this device and wants to record everything in life with his wife Lene. At some point, Lena has had enough. The camera seems to be a way for Nicolas to keep distance from his problem situation. Just like in ‘The Blair Witch Project’, the camera here forms an extra buffer between the main character and reality instead of an enlargement or registration of it. Nicolas is in serious denial and the camera just makes it worse.

As a viewer, we mainly see what Nicolas sees with his camera and the grainy, amateurish handheld camera work of Nicolas, who is also the cameraman of ‘Offscreen’ in reality, does a lot to increase the level of reality. With this film Christopher Boe wanted to depict the end and the processing of a relationship. Some just have a hard time facing the facts and Nicolas is an extreme example of this. Only in the last scenes of the film does his behavior become so extreme that it constitutes a very big break in style with the previous one, leaving the viewer only shaking his head. Until the last ten minutes or so, one can empathize to a certain extent with Nicolas. Yes, he’s pretty screwed up, but the viewer can believe that he still loves Lene and is just having a really hard time with this. After all, these are recognizable emotions.

However, he does behave very strangely. For example, he wants to finish his film about life with his wife at all costs, even if this means that he has to arrange a stand-in for his wife. In very comical scenes, he acts out real-life situations with Trine, who also doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into. It is striking that Trine, just like Sigme – a friend of Lene – is very friendly with Nicolas. Trine laughs a lot at his strange proposals and often participates in them. And Sigme is quietly going to have a drink with Nicolas in the bar, even if the latter becomes very clingy and at least slightly irritating. Apparently they all feel sorry for him. Except for a male friend of his, who also gets tired of his camera and demands that he turn it off when they meet. Nicolas refuses and loses his friend as a result. Because for Nicolas there is no going back. He can no longer live without his protective lens that registers everything and will succumb to his obsession and unprocessed suffering.

‘Offscreen’ is a bit on the long side for its meager story – which might as well have been told in an hour – but still remains interesting for a relatively long time due to the form, the funny scenes, and the amusing interpretation by Nicolas Bro.