Soaps on TV are not like life.  They are life heightened (or lowered depending on one’s point of view).  We get some spoof sequences of TV soaps during this film.  Perhaps, the director is saying that life is like a soap.  However, in Denmark, life is much more serious than a soap even when, on paper, it might sound like one.

Almost confined to two apartments (with a now and again glimpse of blossoms outside the building), the film is not as claustrophobic as this might seem.  That is because the two characters are strongly drawn, experience strange events and have to deal with their emotions.

One is the owner of a beauty parlour, Charlotte, who is, as they say, unlucky in love – very unlucky in fact, attracted to macho, brutal types.  The other is the man downstairs whom she asks to help her out with a furniture shifting problem.  The bigger problem is that he is a transsexual, Veronica, very lonely, acting sometimes as a prostitute, disowned by his father and visited in secret by his fussing mother.

The bonds of friendship grow between these two outsiders.  When Veronica goes into suicidal depression, it is Charlotte who cares for her.

Brief, both comic and dour, but a sympathetic glimpse of people on the margin.

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