The Bench

Kaj is a former chef; he now lives in council housing and has to attend a scheme for the long-term unemployed. Drink cost him everything but not his pride; he will not let the foreman on the scheme give him orders. One day the woman who moves into a flat on the same estate turns out to be the daughter he has not seen for nineteen years. She has run from her husband. Kaj's first instinct is to stay away from her. Then he ends up looking after Jonas, her six-year-old son, and for the first time in years he is responsible for someone other than himself. It is Per Fly's first film and the beginning of his trilogy in Denmark; the two that follow take up other layers of the same society. Jesper Christensen plays Kaj and never makes the character likeable. The film offers no easy salvation; nobody changes in a day.