Festen

Family celebrations have a tendency to open old wounds. It's the can-of-worms scenario. Scratch a dad and there are sexual secrets, scratch a mum and there is suffering and regret.

Thomas Vinterberg puts on his dinner jacket and pukes over the crested silver. Using an aggressive handheld camera, he violates nostalgia in the name of truth. The upper middle class family, who gathers at a chateau hotel, is fractious, even before the eldest son lays into pappa during his 60th birthday bash.

A year earlier one of the daughters committed suicide and her spirit haunts the place. Another son demonstrates psychotic tendencies by raping his wife and verbally attacking everyone else. The surviving daughter brings her boyfriend, a black American jazz musician (racist jibes aplenty), who behaves impeccably.

Those who revel in tradition's downfall and find humiliation a turn-on will be in their element. Others may find the relentless exposure of weakness and hypocrisy embarrassing. Nice families are nice. Not this one.