Another Round at HOME
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
A group of high school teachers, led by Mads Mikkelsen’s history buff, aims to discover the optimal blood alcohol level for everyday life in Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round. Framing their endeavour as a group experiment that may allow them to reach higher planes of productivity, the four teachers aspire to the heights of Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill as they try to prove that humans should have been born with just a smidge of alcohol in their veins. Of course things start off well, before veering spectacularly off course in a haze of empty Smirnoff bottles, broken marriages and personal breathalysers.
The Danish comedy is as thoughtful as you’d expect from the director of The Hunt and The Celebration, cannily poking at the limits of male mid-life delusion, domestic malaise and drinking culture. Mikklesen is mightily impressive too, demonstrating a knack for comedy not always evident in his most widely seen roles, whilst also showing off his athleticism in one of the year’s most delightfully surprising sequences.
