Poignant, beautifully cinematic, romantic; Love Is All You Need is a movie that I did not want to end. It is a love story set in Sarrento, Italy to a sound track of some of the world’s favourite Italian music. Academy Award winning director Susanne Bier and writer Anders Thomas Jensen have teamed up to tell a story about family and family secrets in a very sensitive, entertaining and endearing manner. The music, setting, cinematography and the cast are perfect. Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm capture their roles magnificently and bring a wonderful chemistry to the screen. The supporting cast of characters is very important in this movie, each have a distinct role that brings the viewer very intimately into the heart of these two families. Brosnan says he felt very close to the role having lost his wife to cancer some years ago and as the father of 4 sons he knows something about raising young men. The movie has a very celebratory feel to it that defies the anxiety that the subjects of health, family and weddings could have been shackled with.

This is a story about love, hope, faith and family which is reflected in the romantic setting of Serrento, Italy, set to universally loved Italian music (‘That’s Amore’, Dean Martin) and woven with carefully chosen colours throughout. Bier says she chose a wedding as the catalytic event because when there is a monumental gathering such as a wedding with the associated explosion of energy it is an opportunity for many unspoken things to come out. This is when family secrets surface. In this movie many secrets surface that are momentus in the life of the characters. These are revealed with sensitivity, humour and credibility that makes the story universal.

Trine Dyrholm is Ida, the mother of the bride, the woman dealing with her cancer, the wife of a husband who is a louse, yet despite it all, she falls in love and finds love. She is eternally giving and hopeful. Her attention to her children’s needs in such loving and caring ways, through thoughtful little things, is so endearing. Her sensitivity to others, her determination to forgive, her faith through everything – is thoroughly uplifting.

The cast of characters; Philip (Brosnan) the man who has let his anger over the loss of his wife consume his world to the extent that he cuts everything out but work, yet we want to embrace him for his charm; Philip’s sister-in-law truly a loud mouthed bitch; Patrick (Sebastian Jessen) the son conflicted about who he is; Ida (Trine Dyrholm) the mother/wife battling cancer,  seeing only the best in everyone, not prepared to let life not be lived; Leif, Ida’s husband the louse with no depth of character; Ida’s co workers at the hair salon, typically deeply invested in the personal lives of themselves and their clients and Ida’s daughter, beautiful, young, naive about to grow up faster than she might care to.