Lykkevej (2003)

Sara’s life is turned upside down when her husband Jan tells her he is having an affair with a young colleague. Without worrying too much about the details of the separation, she leaves her husband’s luxurious house and moves into the first place she can afford, in a suburb of Copenhagen. She ends up in the popular Valby district, on Lykkevej (“Happy Street”), in a modest but respectable little house that needs a lot of work. Sara first devotes herself to fixing up her daughter’s room, while getting to know the neighbors. Living right next door is a solitary man named Robert, who is disliked by everyone else in the neighborhood. Sara herself is practically forced to sign a petition against this neighbor straightaway: for years, he has had building materials piled up on the sidewalk because of ongoing work, damaging the image of the whole neighborhood. The family across the street consists of Susanne, Bo, and their son Tim. The couple are going through a crisis, and Sara alternates between listening to the wife’s and the husband’s complaints. Wanting to be independent but having no money, Sara has to improvise by taking a job as a hotel maid. What she really wants, though, is to be a taxi driver, like her father. The problem is that she does not even have a driver’s license. So she starts taking lessons from her neighbor Bo, but then, surprisingly, she also befriends Robert, who is only gruff on the surface and offers her his own taxi to practice driving in. Robert was widowed five years earlier and has never overcome the trauma, which left him unable to finish the house he was building for himself and his wife. Spending time with Sara, who is much older than he is, makes him want to live and have fun again. Robert clears the materials from his sidewalk, putting an end to the neighborhood’s discontent. Meanwhile, after hitting rock bottom, Susanne and Bo reunite, and Jan apologizes to Sara and, remorseful, asks her to come back home to him. She agrees to talk with her husband, but although she admits that one day she might be able to forgive his affair, her life has taken a turn that can no longer be reversed. Back on Lykkevej during the neighborhood’s party, she embraces Robert, while her daughter Malli, having only just arrived, has already made friends with all the neighbors.