Birthday Girl review – Trine Dyrholm superb in mother-daughter cruise ship rape drama

Trine Dyrholm is one of Europe’s finest and hardest-working actors, though she is hardly a household name for viewers beyond her homeland, Denmark. For those who follow Nordic cinema, especially Denmark’s prolific early 00s output, she would be familiar from features such as Festen, In Your Hands and In a Better World. One of those actors who sinks deep into her role, she is especially known for a capacity to play troubled, complex women; her part in Birthday Girl fits that brief to a tee.

A tight little melodrama written and directed by Michael Noer (R, Before the Frost), the film calculates its provocation precisely as it lays out a murky crime that will spark post-viewing debate. Dyrholm plays Nanna, a working-class Danish woman rocking a metric ton of blond hair extensions and huge false eyelashes who longs to heal her imperfect relationship with daughter Cille (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl). The latter has apparently lived with her wealthy father, Nanna’s ex, ever since the divorce.

As a treat for Cille’s 18th birthday, Nanna has booked the two of them and Cille’s best friend, Lea (Maja Ida Thiele), on to a Caribbean cruise, one of those floating resorts specialising in cheap booze and bacchanalian indulgence. On the night of her daughter’s birthday, Nanna lets the girls drink the alcohol she has scored for them, and as all three get sloshed, fractiousness leads to fights. Nanna slopes off, leaving the girls to their own devices while she goes off to flirt and smoke weed with a crew member. In the wee small hours, it becomes apparent that Cille has been raped.

Horrified and overcome with guilt, Nanna tries to get some justice and find the attacker, but post-traumatic Cille is resistant to reporting the incident. What’s more, the crew seem keener on just letting the waves wash over what happened than on prosecution, a matter complicated by the fact that the crime happened in international waters. Nanna and the girls are given a cabin upgrade in the hope that they’ll just shut up, but of course that’s not going to work with dogged Nanna.

Cinematographer Adam Wallensten’s camera spends a lot of time filming the back of Dyrholm’s head as she marches up and down the ship’s eerily lit corridors, barging into areas where she is not supposed to go, demanding to talk to the captain (or the “master”, as the crew sinisterly refer to him). The suspense ratchets up effectively with each step, although the morally complicating twists Noer and Jesper Fink’s script throws in towards the end feel a little contrived and over the top. But thanks to Dyrholm and the rest of the cast, especially Hofmann Lindahl who more than holds her own, the film manages to say something quite nuanced about sexual assault and female relationships, be they between a parent and child or two peers.

• Birthday Girl is on UK digital platforms from 17 June.