Archive from 'Articles'
British newspaper The Guardian has published a review on Danica’s latest work, Equinox. Check it out:
The blackest days of winter might feel like the ideal time for another bracing shot of cool Scandi-noir, but Netflix’s Danish series Equinox has no chill. No quirky detectives in enviable knitwear here, striding through attractive low-rise cities and crisp forests to apply logic to crimes of sadness. We’re somewhere wilder and murkier.
Astrid (Danica Curcic) is a 30-ish, recently separated mother of one who has been styled according to the TV drama template for a damaged soul. Her mousy hair straggles forlornly, her unwillingness to deviate from plain vests and cardigans is a blatant cry for help, and she has got exactly the job you would expect a character defined by fraught intensity to have: she’s a journalist, hosting a late-night radio phone-in that trades in feverish thoughts and liminal fears.
One evening, a disturbing call comes in, prompting a trip back home to Copenhagen to re-investigate the tragedy that destroyed her family when she was a girl. Flashbacks place us in the summer of 1999, when Astrid’s older sister Ida disappeared into thin air, along with a busload of students who had just finished secondary school. Here’s the thing: little Astrid wasn’t surprised when the cops came knocking with bad news, because she had foreseen the calamity in her dreams. Now her visions have started up again, and that shocking phone call is from one of three students who were on the fateful bus ride, but who unaccountably didn’t vanish and have been scarred by the experience. They’re still out there, harbouring secrets Astrid’s imagination might be able to unlock.
So begins one of those rabbit-hole yarns where someone who we don’t believe is delusional increasingly seems that way to their anxious loved ones, because most of their evidence is in their head, and the only people who can corroborate their theories have also had their lives blighted by The Event. It’s the sort of show where the hero takes delivery of a Jiffy bag containing an old cassette player and an anonymous note requesting a meeting, and then the meeting turns out to be at a disused fairground. There’s a dash of Ring, a waft of Stranger Things, a memory of The Returned and a flavour of The Da Vinci Code, all brewed into an overall spookiness that covers the many plot holes – most of them of the “main character fails to ask obvious follow-up question” kind – with a smothering fog.
That’s fine if it’s just to fix the narrative, but Equinox takes a risk by mixing fantastical gubbins with some dead-serious issues. The young and old Astrid are properly disturbed by their nightmares, and the early episodes in particular are a duck call for viewers who see themselves in a woman dogged by overthinking, anxiety and perhaps even psychosis. Astrid’s mental health is integral to the plot: it’s a riddle wrapped in a diagnosis. Sometimes, it feels as if we’re toying with trauma like a teenager messing with a Ouija board.
Equinox also proves to be a show about how differing reactions to loss can pull apart those left behind; about how parents can’t ever be certain that the decisions they make for their children are right, but know the wrong ones can stay with their kids for ever; and about how sad or vulnerable people are susceptible to conspiracy theory and belief in myths. Such recognisable, mundane concerns are, in the best tales about someone who may or may not be experiencing the supernatural, delicately played off against the flickering possibility that magic might actually happen.
That’s a balance Equinox doesn’t quite strike. It shows its hand too early and, as the lurid twists pile up and the probability of a satisfying ending falls, the chances of anything useful being said about the characters’ pain – which many viewers might share and recognise – also recedes. We can see the real emotions the show is trying to talk about, but it’s too far gone from reality to feel a proper connection.
But Equinox isn’t a full-on exploitation ghost train either. Curcic has the right sort of fragile, haunted bravery for the driven Astrid, and Karoline Hamm is excellent as the doomed Ida, a carefree teen who’s the hottest, coolest girl in a friend group riven by interlocking unrequited yearnings, but whose sexual awakening is something she’s not ready to control. For stretches of its not-overlong, easily binged six episodes, Equinox casts some sort of spell. Just don’t think about it too much.
That’s me and my mother, Vesna, on my birthday. How beautiful she is on that picture! It was taken in Serbia so it must be just before we came to Denmark. Both my mother and father are from Belgrade, and they moved to Copenhagen because my father got a job at the Yugoslav Embassy. It was not meant to be in Denmark at all. But then the war came and it became difficult for them to travel back so we stayed. I’m still speaking Serbian with my parents – my vocabulary may not be that great, but I speak the language fluently. We went there for summer vacation almost every year since I was born and I came close to the Serbian.
My most beautiful childhood memories are from the summer vacation with my family, which was always held in the same area of Montenegro. I still go there, just not so often. There were lots of children, at least three families gathered. We walked in the water, played cards, cooked food and held parties. Here I am with my beloved grandmother who died when I was eight years old. She is buried in Denmark, even though she didn’t live here. Unfortunately, she died of cancer while she was up to visit us. It all happened very fast. We held the funeral at the Russian church in Bredgade.
Here I am with my father, Mihajlo, on the beach in Montenegro.
We moved to the 2nd floor of a building in Amager, where I went to kindergarten. I couldn’t speak Danish when I started, and my parents didn’t speak Danish during the first years in Denmark, and they didn’t know much about how the Danes lived. But in kindergarten, I met Bell. Her parents welcomed us with open arms and were a great help for my parents. Here we got invited to a real Danish Christmas at home with them. Bell is on the right, I’m on the left, see how great we are in those clothes (laughs)! In the middle it’s my dear little brother, Ogi. He is three years younger than me, and we are still very close. For many years I was sure I would go stay abroad. It became Denmark anyway because I have my roots here and I have my family, which means everything to me.
A skilled pianist – about 1993
Here I’m in the piano with my childhood friend, Bianca with the violin. I started school at the Institut Sankt Joseph in Østerbro, where we also lived a few years before we returned to Amager. There I met Bianca, who is Brazilian. Her mother was my piano teacher, her father was a painter and I would just go home with them. Bianca and I have played together since we were 6-7 years old. Many years after this picture was taken, we started working in the summer as barmaners on cruises. My parents drove a travel company, which owned two riverboats, one in Volga and one on the Danube at that time. We performed in the evening with such classic gypsy ballads. I figured I was going to be a pianist, but then I went to the Sankt Annæ Gymnasium and met up with my music to ‘open stage’. When I heard the first students playing, I thought, that I didn’t, I didn’t, and I didn’t want to. Nor did I have the discipline or the will.
Debut as diva – 2001
This was my first theater role. I played an Italian diva in the Sankt Annæ Gymnasium’s big student show. I’ve dressed up since when I was very young and I’ve always known that I would be an actress. In high school I really began to think about acting, especially on movies. I once tried to be admitted to the theater school, but I didn’t dare to take it seriously until many years later. That’s why I applied for film science at the university. It was probably the closest I dared come to my dream at that time.
The picture was taken at the Burning Man Festival in the desert of Nevada, where I really got my inner hippie out (laughs). I went directly from high school to the university. We don’t take a gap year in Serbia. My mother and dad would support me in every way – it was just in the air that I had to take a higher education. After my bachelor in film and media science, I could feel that I should have my body. My then boyfriend was a real hippie from California. He lived just near a clown school, which I became very fascinated with. I went to that school for a year. It was a very physical theater school, based on comedia dell’arte, and I learned how to make a clown, mask work and melodrama. But I didn’t have to work with the drama and go into depth with words. So I searched and entered the theater school (the Danish National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance) back home in Denmark. I feel that I grew up during the two to three years abroad.
Family celebration in Serbia – about 2008
In Serbia you celebrate a family party. It’s a big celebration, which is traditionally the big party of the year. So everyone is gathered in the whole family, up to grand-grand-cousins and cousins. In Serbian, all family members are just called brothers and sisters, and perhaps a little about what a close family context means. Here is my uncle and I in a loud mood at that year’s family celebration, which we celebrate every year with my Serbian family. Just notice the musician in the background – listening music to big Serbian parties! My dad, Mihajlo, has always been such a real living, full of anecdotes and stories, and he’s really good at getting through.
Source: Berlingske
