Directed by Anders Morgenthaler (Denmark)

A terrific beginning finds Simon (Kim Bodnia) arriving at a shut-down holiday cottage by the sea with his 6-year-old son Louie for a week's ‘holiday'. Despite their tender and appealing relationship it soon become clear that Simon has something on his mind, added to which, another presence, real or from the memory, haunts the house.

Before too long we realise that Simon has in effect kidnapped Louie after being denied custody, and unbeknown to the boy they are in hiding. A fine balance of the gently funny and the genuinely eerie, as half-remembered incidents from the past resurface, keeps the narrative moving along nicely, but it somehow loses its rhythm towards the end, as the memories become more insistent, and a loose cannon from the world outside breaks into Simon's precious last days with his son.

It's a great performance from Bodnia as a man at the end of his tether but never losing our sympathy, and the rapport between him and Villards Milthers Christensen as Louie is strong and very engaging. It looks good, the golden wheatfields keeping the cottge from the outside world giving it a feeling of an idyll just beyond reach. But the messy end of the film, where memory and present day disaster intertwine, gets out of hand, leaving, strangely, a feeling of anticlimax. Despite Morgenthaler's obvious ability with creepiness, if we'd been able to concentrate on the here and now it might have made for a more slow-burning but satisfying film.

Seen at NFT3 London Film Festival October 30 2007