‘The Pact’ Overview: A Faustian Discount

Is there no equal to the phrase “If it seems too good to be true, it’s” in Danish? As a result of when a baroness in “The Pact” summons a younger poet to her property north of Copenhagen and suggests they make a cut price, he ought to have hightailed it again down the street to his modest dwelling, his sort spouse and their towheaded toddler. However he doesn’t.

Even when Baroness Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann) — greatest generally known as the writer of “Out of Africa,” and beneath her pen title, Isak Dinesen — warns the younger poet Thorkild Bjornvig (Simon Bennebjerg) to run if she reveals any bouts of megalomania, he doesn’t take the trace. The poet desires the greatness the well-known writer ensures him if he places absolute belief in her.

An award winner in Denmark, this well-acted drama concerning the value of literary ambition is directed by Bille August and primarily based on Bjornvig’s 1974 memoir, which was later translated into English as “The Pact: My Friendship With Isak Dinesen.” At the beginning of the friendship, the baroness has been out of Africa greater than 15 years, although the household manor, Rungstedlund, has loads of artifacts from her time in Kenya.

Neumann’s baroness is grandiose and transfixing (as are Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen’s good-looking costumes). Nanna Skaarup Voss as Grete Bjornvig and Asta Kamma August as Benedicte Jensen, Thorkild Bjornvig’s doable love curiosity, supply delicate counterpoints to Blixen’s patrician aura. But there’s a cloying whiff of the unreliable protagonist right here: Thorkild Bjornvig is just too usually unintentionally a louse. It’s a good contact that the particular person with essentially the most sympathy for this Faustian she-devil seems to not be the poet.

The Pact
Not rated. In Danish, with subtitles. Operating time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.