Since opening in its home country of Denmark over 18 months ago, and embarking on a lengthy festival tour that included well-received stops in Toronto, Telluride and London last year, Ole Christian Madsen’s “Flame & Citron” has taken its sweet time arriving in American theaters. (It opened in limited release last Friday.)
But then patience has been evidently a watchword throughout the conception and execution of this handsome WWII biopic-cum-thriller, a long-gestating pet project for 43 year-old Dogme 95 alumnus Madsen.
For starters, the story of the titular duo has been nagging away at him since the age of 12 – ever since his father, a former army colonel, gave him a book on heroes of the Nazi Resistance.
The story of Flame and Citron (aliases for Bent Faurschou-Hviid and Jorgen Haagen Schmith), a pair of native freedom fighters working against the German occupation in 1940s Copenhagen, fired the young Madsen’s imagination, as he sensed a greater moral ambiguity behind it than the history written on the page.