arts & entertainment All You Need Is Love Oscar-winning Jewish-Danish director helms new romantic comedy with a serious underside. Curt Schleier I Special to the Jewish News son, from whom he is estranged, and her daughter are about to be married. In the U.S. to promote the film, Bier, anish director Susanne Bier's 53, said she and her regular collaborator, latest film, Love Is Anders Thomas Jensen, All You Need, is a were regularly approached romantic comedy that came "to do something on the from a dark place, from what topic of cancer. You get she calls "the sad part of the scripts that deal with can- story": cancer. cer as an autobiographical The film stars Pierce story. But we were not Brosnan as Philip, a going to make a movie that wealthy middle-aged wid- suffocated an audience with ower and ex-pat Brit living in that:' Copenhagen. Co-star Trine Still, making a romantic Dyrholm is Ida, a hairdresser Director Suz anne Bier: comedy that starts from so whose mastectomy has, for sad a place is, well, unusual. "I think in A merica you the time being at least, beat Bier disagrees. "I don't have a more narrow breast cancer — only to think it's sad. It has depth. I definition of romantic discover that her husband think in America, you have comedy tha n we do in is leaving her for a younger a more narrow definition of Europe." co-worker with whom he's romantic comedy than we been having an affair. Philip do in Europe. In Europe, it's and Ida meet in Sorrento, Italy, where his slightly broader:' D Pierce Brosnan as Philip and Trine Dyrholm as Ida in Suzanne Bier's Love Is All You Need In the U.S., she says, a rom-com is a romance with laughs; in Europe, these films are more character driven. "Ida is built a little on my mom:' Bier says. "She had breast cancer twice, but she was always a very positive figure. For her, the glass was always at least half full. When she came into a room, the light became a little stronger. We were thinking a lot of her when we wrote [Ida]:" Even Pierce Brosnan is a little sad sack- ish. She cast him rather than a Danish actor "because I felt this character would gain a lot from being lonely in all manner of speaking:' Not only widowed and estranged from his child, "he also was lonely in Denmark, where he felt kind of alienated. Then I thought for Ida, the main [female] char- acter, who had lost everything, by the end Heels Over Head DIA lecture ties yoga to glorious works of art, one with a Detroit connection. I Suzanne Chessler Contributing Writer D ebra Diamond has researched aesthetic connections to yoga and will talk about them Sunday afternoon, June 2, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Diamond, curator of South Asian art at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution, will reference Detroit findings as she discusses "Heels Over Head: Mr. Freer, Swami Vivekananda, and the Art of Yoga:' Debra The presentation will pre- Diamon d view an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition, "Yoga: The Art of Transformation," the first display of the discipline's visual history. The presenta- tion also will cover the Detroit presence in that exhibition. "I'm going to talk about all the excit- ing new things we can learn about yoga through glorious works of art," explains Diamond, who has given other presenta- tions at the DIA. 54 May 30 • 2013 "I'm going to tie my talk to really sublime or funny yoga images, the mean- ings of yoga and how it intersected with American life:' The exhibit will include a 10th-century sculpture of a fierce yogini, which will be on loan from the DIA, and Thomas Edison's film Hindoo Fakir, which has to do with a time when many thought yogis were like magicians. Of special interest in the talk will be tales of the visit of Swami Vivekananda to Charles Lang Freer's Detroit home in 1894. The swami reformed yoga as part of the reformation of Hinduism and brought it to the United States, where his ideas of yoga were presented as rational, ecumenical and democratic. Freer (1854-1919), who made his for- tune in railroad freight car manufactur- ing, collected Asian and American art ultimately donated to the Smithsonian. His home, ranked as one of the most important historic buildings in Michigan, holds the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute. "Because three research paths came together in Detroit, I was excited to see if I could do something about using Detroit as a lens for looking at the history of yoga, the way yoga came to America and the formation of what modern yoga is," says Diamond, who curated the Smithsonian display to include more than 120 works dat- ing from the third to the early-20th century. There will be temple sculptures, devo- tional icons, illustrated manuscripts, court paintings, colonial and early modern pho- tographs, books and films. Diamond's recent research papers and talks have explored changes in yogic ideas as they moved across sectarian borders and into material culture. "There are a lot of aspects of modern yoga that are modern, and there are aspects that are quite ancient," explains Diamond, whose Jewish background and interest in meditation informed her appreciation for the subject matter. "Some yoga traditions have been non- sectarian, while others have been created within religious traditions. The way yoga has moved in and out of religious bases and across borders is an important thread in learning:' ❑ Yogini, Unknown artist, Indian, 10th century, granite, Founders Society Purchase, Detroit Institute of Arts. Debra Diamond will speak at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 2, at the Detroit Institute of Arts before appearing 3:30-5 p.m. at a reception and tour of Detroit's Freer House, 71 E. Ferry. The lecture is free with DIA admission. The reception is $10, $5 for students and Freer House members. (313) 664-2509; rmfoster@wayne.edu .