‘The Pact’ Review: An Older, Embittered Karen Blixen is a Very Long Way Out of Africa in a Dry Literary Biopic
variety.comGuy Lodge Film CriticFor many of us, the first mental image prompted by the name Karen Blixen is of a radiant Meryl Streep, resplendent in oatmeal linen and undulating safari hat, romantically lit in the tawny Kenyan dusk.
If you wish that to remain the case, best to steer clear of “The Pact” — not that Bille August’s flat, unflattering portrait of the older Blixen should be appointment viewing for anyone.
Drawn from Danish poet Thorkild Bjørnvig’s memoir of his thorny friendship with, and tutelage under, the older literary icon, this well-dressed midcentury period piece keeps teasing a darker, more perverse take on a familiar story of cross-generational creative mentorship.
Yet despite a performance of unnerving severity by Birthe Neumann as the rancorous Blixen, the film remains too polite and light on incident to deliver on that promise.
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