Just Like Home

Set in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and everybody has strongly held opinions about how others should conduct their affairs (but wouldn’t dare voice those opinions publicly), Just Like Home recounts what happens when those layers of repression and politesse are discarded. It all starts when a pompous pseudo-bohemian named Lindy Steen (Peter Hesse Overgaard) delivers a talk at the town hall and lets slip that he saw a man running naked through the streets. Suddenly, everyone is convinced that the town – indeed, all of Danish society – is collapsing around them.

In a wrong-headed attempt to ameliorate the situation, the much-beloved local pharmacist (Lars Kaalund) launches a telephone hotline, “The Silent Ear,” staffed by a small group of like-minded townspeople – and pretty soon the situation gets much, much worse.

Just Like Home is beautifully paced and structured, boasting a slew of disarming performances. Scherfig’s genuine affection for her characters drives the film. That said, though Scherfig is gentle with each specific character’s eccentric behaviour, the film is harsher in its overall depiction of an insular society’s collective neuroses. In some ways, the film plays like a recasting of Gabriel García Márquez’s novella In Evil Hour – a bracingly comic one.

Steve Gravestock, Toronto International Film Festival