Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

(Lone Scherfig, UK/Denmark/Sweden/France, 2002)

I am a fan of Lone Scherfig – or at least of her work beginning with the Dogme project Italian for Beginners (2000), her third film. That remarkable movie struck me as the best romantic comedy in many years for the way it blended the pathos of everyday life with the yearning of love stories.

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, filmed in Scotland, reveals Scherfig in a darker mood, with a strong leaning towards black comedy. Yet many of the themes of Italian for Beginners recur: the fragility of communication; the tentativeness of intimacy; the constant comprises and arrangements people make with their neuroses and miseries. It may not be quite as good as its predecessor, but it is still a special achievement.

It begins in a familiar way, as a wry joke about a depressive character, Wilbur (James Sives), who can never quite manage to kill himself. Each time he contemplates a great height, a deep pool, or a sharp object, we learn to laugh in anticipation of his forthcoming bungle.

But, while this gag plays out, Scherfig gradually introduces us to other characters and their problems. Wilbur's brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins), is a lonely guy who looks after the vast bookshop left behind by their father. It seems like a burden, at least until the day that the shy, single mother Alice (Shirley Henderson), walks in.

Meanwhile, a range of other characters – mostly played for humour – arrive via the hospital therapy group that Wilbur grudgingly attends. Chief among them are the hilariously randy Moira (Julia Davis), who has a particular penchant for ear licking, and a dour psychiatrist (Mads Mikkelsen) who seems to have little regard for anyone or anything.

As always in Scherfig, the sadness of all these characters is never very far beneath the surface of the plot. Solitude and pain (both physical and emotional) are registered sharply in reflective moments. Eventually, the relationships become complicated and the roles initially assigned to the characters change places in striking and poignant ways.

Scherfig is able to display a much greater and more classical control of her material here than she could in Italian for Beginners. Places – especially the family bookstore – are conveyed in loving detail. She is constantly tipping the mood of a scene and complicating our perception of events. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is one of the very few recent comedies willing to stray across the line into drama – and yet still manage to return to wistful humour.

It is fascinating to watch how effortlessly Scherfig bridges Danish and Scottish culture with this script (co-written with Anders Thomas Jensen). In fact, it is easy to imagine her next taking on Australia as a setting – intriguingly, it was announced in 2004 that she would be travelling here to teach a Dogme masterclass – since the kind of homely melancholy which she has mastered would, if applied to our national lifestyle, put movies like Spotswood (1992) to shame.

© Adrian Martin July 2003