A small-scale domestic drama with large-scale feeling.

Susanne Bier's film is a pretty ordinary chapter of everyday sin and, it has to be admitted, pretty misery-making.

Open Hearts is far from inaccessible, but it demands a higher level of concentration than most big-budget movies do. The drama exists in a glance or a nod, or in a slight hesitation in speech.

Open Hearts lacks spontaneity ... because it is not essentially taken from life, but constructed in order to prove the filmmaker's superficial premise, that human circumstances and the human heart are beyond comprehension.