Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

ronchow I have never been a fan of Dogme style film making. To me it means jittery frames due to the use of hand-held cameras, little background music, and often grainy images. But 'Open Hearts' is one big exception.The story is about forbidden love. There are plenty of miserable people in this film and yet there are no 'bad' people here. Mads Mikkelsen delivered one of his strongest performance by portraying the tormented lover. He was a good man - a practising doctor, a caring father and husband to his children and wife. Yet he fell in love, madly and beyond his control, with a younger woman who was traumatized by a recent accident. I can totally relate to his agony and sentiment - not being able to remove her from his mind every single waking minute, while fully knowing his obligation to his family.The film concludes without offering a feel-good ending, as life often does. I was left to think about it, and to muse over the dilemma faced by the characters. It made me think for a long time.I strongly recommend this film to anyone who enjoys European cinema. And if you are a romantic, you should not miss it.

Tomas Maly I probably am going the path of the contrarian here, but I really don't understand the high ratings here. I'm all for indie movies on low budgets, but this is just bad. The fuzzy-focus, shaky-camera documentary feel of this movie is totally fine.... But whether it's deliberate or part of the whole Dogme thing, there is absolutely NO editing. There doesn't seem to be any actual script either. It feels like the actors improvised their lines (which is OK) but without much preparation. Dialogue seems forced and unnatural, and you can tell that something is in the dialog because it was a plot point. The video jumps from one thing they say to something else. It was almost like the director was going down a written bullet list of things that need to happen or be said, and was leading them on to improv as they were being videorecorded. "Talk about how your daughter is in trouble", "Ok now cry", "Ok now shout", "Ok now run down the hall", etc... Only bits and pieces to a conversation were recorded, just enough to cover all the plot points, but not enough to seem coherent. The behavior of the actors were not smoothly transitioned from one cut to the next (despite it being only a few seconds/minutes later in 'reality'). It was all dialog without any mood. I don't think this is how people are in real life. It seemed more like 100 cuts of random small little independently acted moments rather than anything coherent. You can tell (whether deliberate or incidental) that the actors weren't paid enough to actually memorize lines (making smooth video scenes possible) and anything more than 15 seconds at a time being recorded.It's just awful. Cuts are not smooth and honestly bothersome. Totally absent of any sort of emotional depth and exploration. The actors weren't allowed to really express much emotionally, it was more about the lines they were saying and the over-the-top reactions that seemed to be about as quality as a first year drama student.The jumping around in dialog make it impossible to actually sympathize or understand any of the reasoning behind what is said. One moment Cecile calls Niels, the next moment he suggest buying furniture for her, then he goes to the supermarket just to have a conversation with her saying how he can't stop thinking about her and thinks he's in love with her. Absolutely zero emotional exploration or transition justifying how he feels. It's out of the blue. Later you see the two seemingly in love, in the middle of having sex, and then the hospital nurse calls to tell Cecile that Joachim finally wants to see her. She of course jumps to the occasion and the literal next scene is Niels in his coworker Finn's basement, implying that he must have moved out of Cecile's place - but without bothering to explain it all. Not even a conversation "oh Niels I'm sorry but I love Joachim and want to be with him".About the best part of the movie was the acting by the supporting people - the daughter, Joachim, the wife, etc. They were more real-life believable. The main actors were just a joke, though.Beyond all that, there was obviously no budget for a costume designer or scene designer. I couldn't decide whether Niels was a doctor or a nurse, with that plain all-white outfit that was clearly purchased at a department store. For all the time he was at the hospital, none of it actually was of him remotely doing a second of his actual work. So I could never figure out what he did there at the hospital. And just because he has an oversized cell phone from 1995 doesn't mean that somehow raises his status to some sort of doctor. He "must" be important with a giant phone! There was nothing 'real life' about moments that showed no actual every day actions (outside of the 'script') of people.The dialog where it is first brought up that Joachim will be forever paralyzed is so made up that there's no sliver of authenticity. Not one line suggests anyone did any research as to medical conditions or even to what might a doctor say. Not one doctor actually said a single medical term or medical condition, no medical explanation as to what happened with Joachim physiologically. Not even something as simple as "his spine was crushed". With the car driving no more than 25mph, how he became paraplegic is beyond me. Not a single bit of dialog justifying his medical condition. Usually a doctor would at least start going into medical details once a family member starts asking about any hope/treatment. Awful.I suppose there is some supposed "real life" feel, but it really seems poor quality. Blair Witch seemed much better. It's fine the car accident scene seemed totally fake, but it really is sub-par for all the actors involved. Low budget doesn't need to be void of intelligent/in-depth dialog, a thought out script, emotional expression, or reasonable editing. With the splices of so many small clips there is really no emotional or psychological exploration of the characters, or transition from one major set of circumstances (the two hanging out) to another (the two living together).This is most definitely NOT Suzanne Bier's "best" as others suggest. All her other movies were light years better. I feel that Mads Mikkelsen's talent was wasted on this film here. Pretty much any other movie of his was far superior, and many of them were also low budget. With Lars Von Trier as the brainchild behind the Dogme rules, I can understand why this movie here is just awful. There isn't a movie of his I can stand. I otherwise really like Scandinavian films.

axxymax There are many reviews telling you about the story about a wife or gf what ever gets involved with a married man. This married man is a doctor with 3 kids. He nails this girl because of sympathy , empathy or for that matter she has a tight body and his wife is saggy hag. so that makes it easy for him to make a choice between the two women. now to add twist in the tale it is the doctors wife who accidentally has mowed down this guy who is paralyzed from his neck below. so the doctor gets to hump his own wife as well as his paralyzed patients wife. during the whole movie no cops are involved, no lawsuits are filed and the doc is having a time of his life humping the two ladies. The biggest loser in the whole movie is the guy who was caught in the accident. he loses his girl, his job, his life is focked up. his girlfriend is humping the doctor and the bitch wife who started the whole fiasco gets alimony and child support for her 3 kids. she is happy, the gf of the paralyzed guy is happy with the doc and the doc is happy with his new tit carrier and pole polisher with bouts of sadness when he tears those alimony and child support check. This is my outlook an synopsis of the movie.

Henry Fields A girl whose boyfriend went paraplegic because of a car crash falls in love with the husband of the woman that ran her fiancée over. Though the plot may look like a twisted soap opera the fact is that the movie of Akeson & Olesen is such an intense and wise portrait of human emotions. Feeling of guilt, love, infidelity... no flowery stuff and no useless decorations. "Open hearts" is a piece of life.Despite the directors probe to know their job their movie wouldn't be the same without the impressive work of the extraordinary actors she chose. Propably none of them will won an Oscar, and they're not very popular, but they'd deserve to be big stars.Another great contribution of DOGMA movement to last decade's cinema.*My rate: 9/10