The Door

David is a successful painter. The house is large, he has a wife and a small daughter. One afternoon he goes to meet the neighbour and leaves the girl alone in the garden. When he comes back the child has drowned in the pool. Years pass. David does not paint, his wife Maja has not forgiven him and the two live apart. One day, near his old house, behind the bushes, he finds a door. The door opens onto the morning of that day. He goes through and saves his daughter. But there is already a David in that day. Anno Saul directs. Mads Mikkelsen takes the lead; Jessica Schwarz plays Maja and Heike Makatsch the neighbour. It is a German production and the film is in German. Mads Mikkelsen is a Danish actor and plays here in German, which is the most striking detail on the production side. The matter the narrative builds is not the rules of time travel but what happens to the person whose place you take; the film asks that directly and its answer moves toward horror. In the second part others may have found the same door, and the narrative draws its tension from that. Its problem is internal consistency; past a certain point the rules bend to the needs of the narrative. The visual work is cold and orderly, and the setting is almost entirely a single neighbourhood. Who it is for: viewers who like European thrillers on fantastical ground and Mads Mikkelsen. Who it is not for: there are gaps in the logic, the ending is arguable, and the subject turns on the death of a child.