ROTTING IN DENMARK

REVIEWED - IN YOUR HANDS/FORBRYDELSER: Last time I checked, there was a clause in the Dogme 95 manifesto forbidding genre pictures.

You might argue that In Your Hands, the 10th film made under the ascetic strictures of that Danish movement, revisits so many familiar themes from the prison movie - the new, liberal employee; the hardened old hand; the holy sinner - that it deserves to have its certificate revoked. Indeed, the picture plays a little like an eye-wateringly glum version of The Green Mile.

Anna (Ann Eleonora Jorgensen), the new pastor at a women's prison, finds herself intrigued by a peculiar new inmate. Kate (Trine Dyrholm), a former drug addict, has been incarcerated for allowing her baby to die from thirst. It becomes clear that this distant, dead-eyed young woman, who, it is suggested, spirited away her addiction, may have supernatural powers. When Kate suggests that Anna, apparently infertile, may be pregnant, the modern, practical pastor is dismissive. Then her doctor confirms the mystic's diagnosis.

Later in the film, Anna is presented with a moral dilemma that somebody with Kate's alleged powers might be able to solve. There's an interesting theological knot here: should the pastor, as a practicing Christian, be more or less open to the idea of miracles?

Annette Olesen, director of the sad comedy Minor Mishaps, allows the story - depressing even by the standards of Dogme films - to build up a stifling intensity. She is well served by a faultless cast that brings life, if not levity, to every scene. Dyrholm, in particular, has a bottomless intensity that allows you to believe both fantastic and terrible things about her.

But, in its unrelenting pessimism, the film asks rather too much of the audience. To get away with this level of catastrophe you have to be a Bergman, a Loach or, at the very least, a Moodysson. A little too inclined towards melodrama, Olesen is not quite in that league.