Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

A film set in Glasgow. Wilbur is trying to kill himself. He has tried several times and each time his brother has got there in time. Harbour is that brother. He runs the old bookshop left by their father; the shop makes no money and he keeps postponing the rest of his life to look after his brother. They go to a support group for people who have attempted suicide. Wilbur does not fit in there either. A woman comes to the shop to sell books. Alice cleans at a hospital and has a small daughter; she is bringing in her dead husband's books. Harbour and Alice marry. The house fills up, and Wilbur is there too. From there the film goes somewhere unexpected. The one who falls ill is not Wilbur. What the narrative is interested in is not the wish to die but exchange: the balance between the man who wants to die and the man who wants to live comes apart, and the film builds that not as irony but as a handing over of weight. The tone sits between comedy and sadness. The jokes are dry and close to Scottish humour; there are almost no scenes designed to make you cry. Jamie Sives, Adrian Rawlins, Shirley Henderson and Mads Mikkelsen are in the cast. Lone Scherfig directed; she is Danish and the film is a Danish and British co-production. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet European drama with dry humour. Who it is not for: anyone the subject would weigh on; the film opens suicide as a joke and then takes it entirely seriously.