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Mads Mikkelsen On A Mission To Get Laid In Men & Chicken

Meet Elias – Mads Mikkelsen’s weird alter ego in ‘Men & Chicken’.

Not all men are created equal… and this couldn’t be more true than in the new dark comedy from writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen. Following the twisted story of Elias (played by Mads Mikkelsen) and his brother Gabriel (played by David Dencik), ‘Men & Chicken’ is as uncomfortable as it gets.

But it happens to be incredibly touching and funny to boot.

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The story revolves round Elias and his brother Gabriel… and while they’re constantly at odds with each other, the everyday squabbling between brothers hides something far more sinister.

Their family secret is far more outrageous than most – they find out that their parents aren’t actually their biological parents. After a bit of digging, Gabriel tracks down their extended family to a small farm in a remote village.

And this is where it all goes a bit ‘League of Gentlemen’.

Packed full of truly repugnant characters, it’s difficult to pin down exactly why you’re rooting for any of them… but for some reason, you are. I caught up with Mads Mikkelsen to find out more about Elias, and how he fits into his misfit family.

“There are two missions for him,” he explained. “One mission is to make sure that his brother loves him, which is obviously an almost impossible task because he’s such an annoying character, and the second mission for him is to get laid… and that is even more impossible.”

That’s probably because Elias is so unlikeable throughout.

‘Men & Chicken’ paints an ugly picture of Elias – a violent, hot-headed man who also happens to be a chronic masturbator. All-in-all, not the most level-headed kind of guy.

But he’s not stupid, either.

“We decided that he had a few tools in the back pocket of his character,” he said. “Basically, he wants to be right – he wants to have his own way. He can do that by being aggressive, and by talking quite intelligently (in the sense that he knows a lot) but he mixes it up to the way he wants it, right? He can’t just wait – he keeps talking them to death. He would behave like a little kid, he would start welling up and become really sad… those are his tools. Those are his tools to get what he wants.”

Of course, he doesn’t get what he wants from everyone – including the clearly horrified woman who finds herself on a date with Elias at the start of the movie. Highlighting just how self-obsessed he really is, Mikkelsen plays it for tremendous laughs.

But there’s a sad truth beneath the outrageous surface.

“It’s quite uncomfortable, but that’s the whole idea,” he said. “The character has no idea – he’s not aware what’s happening. He has invented a mirror reflection that’s quite different to the rest of the world… like a rhinoceros in a china store, he just walks right in there and has no feeling for what the situation is. And that is always wonderful to do that as a character. I enjoyed it tremendously.”

As you might imagine, his date doesn’t go so well… and ends with Elias masturbating in the restaurant toilet. But Mikkelsen points out that this too is far sadder than we realise.

“These kinds of people do exist… For him, it’s just something he’s born with and it sticks. It’s not enjoyable any more – it’s quite painful so it’s something that’s haunting him. But he doesn’t really reflect on it – he just finds it really, really weird that nobody really loves him. No women love him and that’s really weird.”

Thankfully, ‘Men & Chicken’ provides Elias and his brother the chance to gain a family – even if it’s not quite the fairy tale family they always imagined.

“All he wanted was for someone to love him, right? And all of a sudden, for him it ends up being a family. You can say in many ways that it’s a sick and sad family… but it’s a family.”

I won’t spoil the movie by explaining why their family is so ‘unique’… but suffice to say that dark comedy definitely covers it. And director Anders Thomas Jensen milks the situation for all its worth.

Essentially, the film asks some of the bigger questions… and comes back with some rather odd answers. But isn’t that what life is all about?

Just don’t get too close to their chickens.

‘Men and Chicken’ heads to cinemas on 15 July 2016.

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Picture Credit: Drafthouse Pictures