The gray-green color palette of Submarino, and the pale sunlight of its Northern European setting, enhances the film's dark yet wanly hopeful emotional tone. The latest film from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, who co-founded the much-discussed Dogme 95 movement with his colleague Lars von Trier, focuses on a pair of brothers badly damaged in childhood by an irresponsible alcoholic mother. Adulthood proves difficult: one brother suffers from violent outbursts and the other is a junkie. Filmed with bare minimalism, Submarino dispenses with the usual Hollywood claptrap and is buoyed by low-key acting. The drama never turns to melodrama, even when a matchstick of love and hope lights the darkness of the brothers' lives.
Submarino will be out Oct. 11 on DVD.
