By Dennis Hartley

My favorite line from The Lion in Winter is King Henry’s quip “What shall we hang, the holly or each other?” One thing remains as true now as it did in the 12th Century: nothing evokes “family dysfunction” like the vision of a good old-fashioned holiday gathering.

Charlotte Brodthagen’s dramedy opens with a twenty-something college student (Freja Klint Sandberg) and her mother (Lene Maria Christensen) settling in to their family’s cabin in the Danish woodlands for their annual mother-daughter Christmas celebration. Everything seems to be going swimmingly, until long-estranged grandma (Birthe Neumann) crashes the party. As to what ensues next…if I may quote from I, Claudius: “Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.” Ho ho ho!

This is familiar territory; but the keenly observant screenplay (by Brodthagen and Simon Weil) is tempered with just enough deadpan Scandinavian humor to keep the melodrama from boiling over, and the three leads deliver outstanding performances.