Just the Right Amount of Violence

"No matter how old we get, the wounds that our parents gave us will never heal," says Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen, who had a less than close relationship with his own father. In the well-heeled suburbs of Los Angeles, he follows "interventionists" who (with parental permission) drag problem teenagers from their beds and take them to a strict "reeducation school" in Utah.  While Carlsen tells the personal story of his father's disappearance, he wonders about the extent to which the teenagers are really the problem, and about what role their parents play. Accompanied by his personal, ironic commentary, Carlsen gives the viewer a glimpse behind the façade of peaceable-looking middle-class family life in L.A. – capital of the world of make believe. He contrasts cheerful home movies with scenes in which parents betray their children by having them taken away by strangers, against their will. Carlsen takes the motto of this subjective film, which he refers to as a form of "dramatized verité," from Nietzsche: "There are no facts, only interpretations." At the end, he tells us why he chose to stage some of the film in his search for the truth.