Reviewed - After the Wedding/Efter Brylluppet:ONE of Danish and European cinema's most accomplished storytellers, Susanne Bier has directed 11 feature films, and the quantity of her work is matched by its quality. After the Wedding marks her third collaboration with screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, following the riveting dramas Open Hearts and Brothers.

Brothers acutely explored the consequences when a traumatised prisoner-of-war returns home from service in Afghanistan to altered family circumstances in Denmark. After the Wedding, an Oscar nominee this year for foreign-language film, pivots on another returning Dane, Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen), who has dedicated his life to helping street children in India.

When the Mumbai orphanage that Jacob runs is threatened with closure, a gregarious billionaire considers making a substantial donation to save it. He summons Jacob to Copenhagen for a meeting, and invites him to his daughter's lavish wedding the following day.

The extreme contrast between the poverty Jacob has witnessed in India and the state-of-the-art hotel suite where he is installed in Copenhagen makes Jacob ill at ease, but there is further upheaval ahead at the wedding, where Jacob has to confront and deal with matters from 20 years in the past.

Recriminations erupt in the emotionally charged consequences, and while several twists in the story may seem to be stretching coincidence, the narrative is developed so astutely and confidently, and with such dramatic power, that the willing suspension of disbelief is easily achieved.

Bier's deeply involving film is rooted in life's messy complications as it reflects on the themes of regrets, past mistakes, blood ties and mortality. Outstanding among an exemplary cast, Mikkelsen (most recently seen as the villainous Le Chiffre in Casino Royale) is aptly sad-eyed and intense in an understated performance that is quietly affecting and subtly expressive.