Ms. Hansen & the Bad Companions

They are the ones the others are not allowed to play with. But 80-year-old Inger nonetheless gives a home and some much-needed love to the misfits she invites to live in her big mess of a villa in a small town somewhere in Denmark. Some of them have lived there for years, while others drop by for a brief mention and have moved on before anyone found out what they were even called. Abuse and mental illness are an important part of the story, but not the whole story. For Inger insists that there is good in all people and that the most important thing is to learn to love ourselves. But when Inger suddenly falls ill herself, the guests in her self-designed microcosm must learn to send some of the love and care the other way. Director Jella Bethmann paints a vivid and ultimately life-affirming portrait of ‘bad company’ in a film that gives space to some of the people who don’t fit into society’s conformist puzzle of norms and frames.