Finale

Marlene Lyngstad / Denmark / 2024

Any sense of continuity in ‘Finale’ is accidental and unintentional, we are told in a mysterious text at the end of the film, and it retroactively changes the rest of Marlene Lyngstad’s idiosyncratic film in one fell swoop. For what does it say about the otherwise simple and everyday routines that the camera’s hovering and all-seeing eye observes in the funeral parlour where the film is set? Here, the living prepare their clients to be sent on their final journey. Cannes winner Marlene Lyngstad is a deeply original filmmaker who has a special ability to pull the rug out from under reality, using simple means – such as a camera set-up that looks like you’re spying on the cast through a hole in the wall – to create new ways of making (and at least watching) films.