To New Beginnings (2025)
When Paprika Steen made Den tid på året, I heard in an interview she mentioned sort of jokingly that maybe she should make a New Year movie at some point. Movies set at New Year’s Eve are far less common than Christmas movies, but there is some underutilized potential here. While Christmas allows for stirring up uncomfortable family issues, New Year’s Eve is for many more about having traditions with friends. Perhaps friends you haven’t seen in a while. The promotional material for this has set it up as being in the same vein as Paprika Steen’s Christmas movie from 2018, and while there are many similarities and cast overlap, this is different. It is less of a comedy for starters, even though it is incredibly funny full of awkward scenes one might relate to in some way. It is more of a tragedy, a tragedy from the past that unfolds during this night, which makes a lot of things fall into place. The cast is great in the roles with showing that the have a facade going on through the night, that gradually falls off to reveal what they are really dealing with.
It does what it sets out to do rather well, especially showcasing yet another sort of compulsory social interactions, this time with a group of friends where one person clings to the tradition more than the rest. What unfolds through this New Year’s Eve becomes rather tragic, but not without showing that things will likely improve from now on.
Where it fails a bit for me is how it comes of as mostly constructed, where the characters only feel half-developed. It doesn’t help that once they move outside to the street, the illusion shatters, as it becomes very clear that they haven’t been filming on the streets at New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen. It is computer generated backgrounds at best, blurred out at worst. Unlike Den tid på året were it was kept inside a little microcosmos of a single house on Christmas Eve, which kept the small hint of fairy tale alive. This movie ends on a sligthly magical realism note as well, it just doesn’t work that well.
However, I hope Paprika Steen will continue doing these sort of films. Perhaps something on a work place next to keep in the theme of semi-forced social interactions.
Rating: 3.5