This film is about family, about humanity, and about life. It's about everything. The little girl's death threw a bomb to the world around her. Her parents blamed each other for what had happened and grew cold towards each other. The family nearly collapsed.The little girl's death gave his imagery big brother a chance to live as a truly human being. He came out of the walls and stepped into the real world for the first time in his maybe early twenties. As a twenty something grown-up, he is not what people expected him to be; not an experienced, learned or sophisticated adult. On the contrary, he is quite simple, unworldly, and naïve; he's a baby trapped in a young man's body. Even though he still had to take a living adventure on his own. What he went through provided us an opportunity to see and think how one takes and learns to be a capable, suitable and adaptive living person in a society. His endurance showed us how presumption, prejudice, misunderstanding and misconception relate to how we treat one another. What he undertook granted us a possibility to see how people use one another in the wrong way; how people take advantage of others when they feel they are more superior. His odyssey really reveals every aspect of humanity. After seeing this film, we can begin to agree the negative denotation in the phrase "We're Only Human".

Walter and Charlotte live with their 7 years old daughter Lisa in a Danish town. There is nothing unique about them. They are two small time Yupies in their 30's, leading lives which resemble the lives of many people of their social class, and probably the lives of many of the spectators. Both of them are hard working people, they have a few good, loyal friends, they own a small apartment and they are not happy. At the same time Lisa, their daughter, imagines to have an older brother, living behind the wall paper. The question raised at this point by director Ake Sandgren is, what would happen if this imaginary figure, made up by the innocent fantasy of a child, would become a real human being. When this happens one day, the imaginary brother begins a long and painful learning process. He will find out, that the gap between the expectations of a child (the one that made him up, in this case) and the realities of the adults is huge. He'll find out that the values preached by adults are there to mislead him and cover up their own true intentions. And he will have to find out, that people don't refer to what he really is, but rather use him for their purposes and perceive him as what they want him to be. With an excellent script that reminds of Lars von Trier (whose production company, Zentropa, produced the movie) and a great piece of acting by Nicolaj Lie Kaas (the imaginary figure), Peter Mygind (Walter) and Susan Olsen (Charlotte), Ake Sandgren challenges the spectator with the question, weather or not it is possible to live in modern society and remain a human being. A masterpiece of film art, which pulls the best out of the Dogme 95 principles.

There are a few movies today that make you think about society when you leave the darkness of the cinema. Et Rigtigt Menneske does. Åke Sandgren has created a magic story that entertains, puzzles and stays in your mind for a long time. It's a beauty.

Walther and Charlotte are a not-so-happily married couple with a daughter named Lisa, and would have had an older son if they hadn't chosen to abort him. Lisa imagines that her brother lives inside the wall of their apartment. As this Dogme95 film opens, the building that they live in is about to be torn down, and when it is torn down, we see someone crawl out of the rubble. He thinks he is Walther and Charlotte's son and he appears to be in his early 20's, but he doesn't know his own name or have any idea about even the most simple aspects of daily life. How this simple man interacts with the not-so-simple world is reminiscent of Chauncey Gardner in "Being There," while the strange aspects of his origins makes it feel just a little like "The Sixth Sense."This fantasy aspect makes this an unusual Dogme95 film, and would seem to break rule #8 (genre movies). It seems likely to me that rule #2 (sound) was also broken at times, and I'm not sure about #5 (optical work and filters). As far as the acting, which is normally what makes or breaks a Dogme95 film, the parents and other "normal" people were fairly good, while the main character was a bit weak. If you're a fan of Dogme95 films or if the description sounds intriguing, this film is definitely worth seeing. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival on 5/1/2002.