Film Review: ATTACHMENT: Danish Family Drama Finds the Horror in What’s Left Unsaid [Tribeca 2022]

Attachment Review

Attachment (2022) Film Review from the 21st Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Gabriel Bier Gislason, starring Josephine Park, Ellie Kendrick, Sofie Gråbøl, and David Dencik.

Despite a hefty portion of it being in English, the entirety of Attachment ­– the feature debut from Danish director Gabriel Bier Gislason (son of filmmaker Susanne Bier) – is subtitled. One might think that’s just a courtesy to the audience – that Gislason is taking into account his non-English-speaking audience just as much as he is his non-Danish-speaking and non-Yiddish-speaking ones. It could also be a courtesy because of how much mumbling and fast-talking his characters do, no matter which language they’re speaking. Regardless, I can’t help but read subtitles when they’re on – even if they’re for my native English tongue ­– so I read them all. And I was surprised how frequently the English subtitles in particular didn’t sync up with the English dialogue.

It’s not that the subtitles were wrong, per se, but rather that there were quite a few gaps in the translations. (I can’t speak to the Danish or Yiddish translations as I am a non-Dane goy, but I suspect there were similar slip-ups.) Again, this could potentially have a simple explanation (and let me extend a common courtesy this time, one of a reasonable doubt): maybe the film’s subtitle translator, be it human or AI, slipped up; maybe the subtitle file got corrupted; maybe the transcription was trimmed as a time-saving method to keep up with the aforementioned rapid dialogue that the film is prone to. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t shake the suspicion that the subtitling itself was a reflection of Attachment’s core: that being, the dangers of deliberate obfuscation and the hiding of information behind barriers of language and history.

This theme manifests in different ways for Maja and Leah (Josephine Park and Ellie Kendrick, respectively), two women who strike up a whirlwind romance during the latter’s study-abroad in Denmark. After a sudden violent seizure sends Leah back to London with a broken leg, Maja – an out-of-work former actress with nothing but library reading engagements to look forward to – follows eagerly in tow. Knowing that Leah’s Conservative Jewish mother, Chana (Sofie Gråbøl) is prone to tradition, Maja hopes to make a good impression – as well as a friend in her girlfriend’s expat mum (Chana emigrated from Denmark herself decades ago). But upon their arrival Chana is cold and alienating to Maja, hovering over Leah like a hawk and barely letting them have a private moment together, despite having separate flats.

Leah’s wise yet wry uncle Lev (David Dencik) is quick to assure Maja that Chana’s coldness is pure motherly overprotectiveness, and nothing to do with theologically-based homophobia or anything like that. Maja, however, suspects a third, as-yet-unknown option as the reason behind Chana’s sourness … especially since Lev keeps pushing literature about Jewish mysticism onto Maja, as if for supposed research. It also doesn’t help that Chana and Lev hold Yiddish conversations seemingly about Maja right in front of her, and Chana utters potentially threatening messages to Maja in Danish that Leah isn’t privy to. And to top it all off there are numerous strange occurrences that only Maja sees and hears ­– like candles suddenly appearing and floorboards suddenly creaking in the middle of the night – which Leah writes off as nothing but the by-products of strung-out nerves.

And yet Leah herself also feels out of the loop, particularly with these Danish-only conversations between Maja and her mum and a general lack of clarity over her physical debilitation (which doesn’t seem to be healing as fast as it should). Not to mention Leah reads Maja’s persistent paranoia as her girlfriend intentionally keeping something hidden from her, thus conjuring up her own corrosive worries and fears.

These criss-crossing conversations and hidden intentions feel worthy of an evidence board to pore over, with bits of red string necessary to connect all the pieces, but Attachment plays fast and with a sense of immediacy – like a marathon, both in keeping up with it as well as attempting to interpret it. Gislason utilizes this confusion and ambiguity to keep us in the dark until the very end, never letting on to the true nature of Maja and Leah’s predicament beyond a vague, impending sense of dread. When the truth is finally revealed its horror merely switches out its residence of dread for that of regret. The result is our protagonists’ experiencing one of the worst possible personal reckonings that they could, and it lands with a sorrowful punch to the gut.

If the family-history-as-horror sub-genre has become a bit blasé, then Gislason has breathed new life into it with Attachment. Maybe call your mom before it’s too late … or at least before you stumble across the family curse yourself.

Rating: 8/10

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