I watched Falkehjerte to see if it would be appropriate for my 11-year-old niece. After a slightly dull start, the movie began drawing me into its airy and light-hearted narrative. The Falcon aspect is sort of just a frame for a story of how a different culture is more stimulating to this kind of nerdy girl than her home life, where both of her parents are too busy to take care of her. It's sort of a fantasy movie, a dreamlike journey of boarding a parked truck in Denmark to seek shelter for the rain, and then waking up the next morning in a coastal town in Italy. Here, Katja is caught up in the local kids' gangs (incl. Some young mafioso!), and grow to have a life of friendship with them, until she has to get home to her parents, who after all miss her. The movie is a meditation on dreaming of belonging, in more exciting surroundings than a mind-numbingly boring modern suburban one with parents that are far too busy to stop and smell the flowers. It's well-made in every way, and the only reason I'm not giving it a higher rating is because I'm not exactly the target audience.
Don't listen to the other review here, from 2007 - it's clearly written by the kind of person who only rates movies 1 or 10 and doesn't see the nuance in between.
