Review: ‘The Exception’ digs under the fingernails of office drama

Gaslighting is often a subtle form of terror. It creeps into your subconcious like a worm nibbling its way through a rotten apple. Or, as in such films as Gaslight (1944) and more recently Black Bear (2020), it can be pulverizing, squishing your emotions as roadkill on some desolate highway. Jesper W. Nielsen’s The Exception, a Danish thriller, with a screenplay penned by Christian Torpe (based on Christian Jungersen’s 2004 novel), turns the gaslighting burner up to 100 and lets it boil until there’s nothing left.

Anne-Lise (Sidse Babett Knudsen, Westworld) is relatively new to the office, a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to reevaluate historical events, such as The Holocaust, through data collection, researched reporting, and handling of important artifacts, books, and other notable items. While navigating her duties, Anne-Lise finds herself tangled up in office politics, as her three coworkers ⏤ Iben (Danica Curcic, The Mist series), Malene (Amanda Collin, Raised by Wolves series), and Camilla (Lene Maria Christensen, The Legacy series) ⏤ make her life a living hell. And it’s nearly always in snide remarks, or hushed conversations, that the gaslighting takes root in the beginning. The trio, however, soon accuse Anne-Lise of sending them threatening emails, even though there’s never an indication she harbors such a demented intent. And she almost gets fired by these unfounded allegations.

The film does an efffective job in peeling back the layers of their lives, inviting the viewer to fully understand each character’s emotional and psychological standings. We come to learn Iben has severe PTSD from a previous tour of Africa, during which she was held hostage and tortured, and her trauma manifests itself through hallucinatons of one of her child captors. Then, Malene struggles with a severe form of arthritis so crippling that it affects even her ability to get intimate with her boyfriend, and it is from such a bleeding point of unimaginable pain that you discern why she is largely abrassive and callous. Finally, Camilla has her own demons, too: concealing a previous affair from her husband.

The Exception combines character flaws and deeply damaged backstories into a pressure cooker, and you just know it’s going to explode eventually. Meanwhile, Iben begins to suspect someone from her past, perhaps shady characters working in the mob or other underground organizations, have something to do with the series of menazing emails promising bodily harm. Yet eyes somehow always turn back to Anne-Lise ⏤ Malene especially seems to have an axe to grind and refuses to let up, often the ringleader in gaslighting Anne-Lise until she bursts into tears. To that end, it’s highly effective in turning the psychological screws on the viewer as much as the characters themselves, but many of the bullying seems are excruciating to watch. In fact, they may be downright triggering from some.

In switching among genres, leaping between psycho-drama to crime-thriller, The Exception can feel disjointed, but it is compelling enough to keep you hooked until the final frame. As strong as the cast is, Knudsen steals the show with a nuanced, heart-wrenching, and totally endearing performance as woman suffering in a society that constantly pits women against one another. There’s jealousy, rage, resentment, and complicity within the heirarchy of workplace drama, and Knudsen’s Anne-Lise is just the latest victim.

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