While Daniel Craig and Eva Green took most of the plaudits for Casino Royale, the latest 007 adventure owed much to the hissability of its villain.

Mads Mikkelsen has been a key player in the recent success of Danish cinema. Equally credible conveying benevolence and malignancy, he has headlined such acclaimed dramas as Nicholas Winding Refn's With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II, Ole Christian Madsen's Prague and a trio of dark Anders Thomas Jensen comedies: Flickering Lights, The Green Butchers and Adam's Apples.

After the Wedding sees Mikkelsen reunite with his Open Hearts director Susanne Bier. This is a brazenly contrived melodrama. But such is the intensity of the performances and the relentless intimacy of the camerawork that the action takes on a Dogme-style significance, as Mikkelsen travels back to Copenhagen to meet Rolf Lassgard, a businessman whose donation to the Indian orphanage that Mikkelsen runs depends on his attendance at the forthcoming nuptials of Stine Fischer Christensen - the daughter he never knew he had.

Following the example of Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen scrupulously avoids soap operatics by concentrating on the reactions of the characters to events that would ordinarily strain credibility. Furthermore, Bier's measured direction makes the disconcertingly taciturn Mikkelsen's entrapment by both the manipulative Lassgard and old flame Sidse Babett Knudsen all the more compelling.

Mika Kaurismäki was once tipped to rival his older brother, the cult Finnish auteur, Aki Kaurismäki. But he's since found a niche for himself making off-beat documentaries. Brasileirinho is the follow-up to his little-seen The Sound of Brazil (2002) and concentrates on choro, the distinctive blend of European, African and South American rhythms that forms the basis of such Latino styles as the samba and bossa nova.

It's a pretty traditional survey of the sound's evolution but, while more time might have been spent on the history of the music and its place in Brazilian culture, infectiously intense performances by the likes of Rio choro maestros Trio Madeira Brasil should delight all World Music fans.

Anyone seeking something different from the mainstream might also like to check out the Tongues on Fire Festival at the ICA in London. This annual showcase for Asian women working in film comprises two features and a documentary.

Rehana Mirza's Hiding Divya follows a woman who returns home for the first time since her teenage pregnancy to learn that she will have to reach an arrangement with her estranged mother in order to secure the inheritance left by her uncle.

Bollywood icon Aishwarya Rai headlines Jag Mundhra's Provoked, a fact-based drama involving a Punjabi woman living in London, jailed for the murder of her abusive husband, only to be freed in a landmark judgement that redefined the notion of provocation in cases of domestic violence.

Hélène Klodawsky's No More Tears Sister recalls the achievements of Dr Rajani Thiranagama, the Sri Lankan human rights activist who was assassinated in 1990.

Finally, keep an eye out for Richard Bracewell's The Gigolos, a slow-burning teaser set against the supposedly refined backdrops of Mayfair and Piccadilly. Siblings Sacha and Trevor Sather impress as the gigolo and pimp, whose slick alliance becomes a fractious rivalry after they begin competing for the custom of such clients as Susannah York, Sian Phillips and Anna Massey. Irreverently witty and casually savage, this continues British cinema's recent run of slick low-budget indies.