The Pact Review: Karen Blixen Story Gets Compelling & Worthwhile Slow Burn
The Pactis a well-crafted character study of an icon and her influence. The performances are pitch-perfect and the moderate Danish setting is lush with beautiful natural environments, yet eerily empty and void of personality. Director Billie August (The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) takes his time building up a story even those familiar with Karen Blixen and her autobiography, Out Of Africa, will be stunned by. But instead of rehashing the Meryl Streep and Robert Redford-led film that follows Blixen in Africa, screenwriter Christian Torpe chooses the memoir written by one of her friends and mentee Thorkild Bjørnvig as a way into a more compelling and, at times, more sinister film experience.
Writer Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) has looked up to Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann) for years and his latest piece of writing seems to have caught the attention of his idol. Thorkild is happily married with an infant son and content with his life. But after meeting Blixen, his eyes start to wander in more ways than one. At this point in her life, Blixen is suffering from intentional mercury poisoning, a common remedy to syphilis at the time. Though she and Thorkild are seeing a lot of each other, much to the dismay of his wife Grete (Nanna Skaarup Voss), she makes it clear that their relationship is not sexual. Ironically, that is where things get messy. After numerous dinners alone, as well as with Gerte and the cosmopolitan elite, Thorkild and Blixen enter into a pact — she will guide his career and he will trust her implicitly. The problem is that her vision of trust involves him living with her, cheating on his wife, and being proud of both.
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