Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself: Suicide botch

Melancholy Dane meets depressed Scot in Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

By Jeannette Catsoulis

With a Danish filmmaker and a Scottish location, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself operates from a possibility rarely addressed in American film: that successful families are just as likely to be bound by weakness as by strength. In other words, our flaws keep us together just as efficiently as our virtues.

Just as well, for the film's central trio is dealing with more issues than even poor little Blanket Jackson is likely to face. Having tried to off himself twice during the film's opening credits, the titular Wilbur (Jamie Sives) seems as incompetent at death as he is at life. When not attending group therapy at the local hospital, the charmingly unstable laddie shares a Glasgow flat with his concerned older brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins, looking as comfortable as his character's name), and helps out in the ramshackle bookstore left to them by their deceased parents.

Then Alice (Intermission's Shirley Henderson), an insecure cleaning lady with a small daughter and huge emotional needs, enters their lives, and a romantic triangle forms and refuses to dissolve even after one of the brothers becomes her husband. But Wilbur isn't about romance; it's about how we cope with grief and what we're willing to do to survive. Funny in a low-key, gentle way, the movie's quirkiness never obscures its humanity, and the performers approach their material with a warmth that's entirely free of irony or condescension.

Writer-director Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners), a devotee of Lars von Trier's Dogme school, has abandoned her minimalist roots to give Wilbur some lovely tracking shots, soft color and a lush score (by Joachim Holbeck). Originally set in Denmark, the location was switched to Glasgow at the urging of Scottish financiers who probably saw the city as a more fitting backdrop for a story about depression and desperation. Those of us who grew up there would have to agree.