There is something very charming about Danish director Susanne Bier’s latest romantic comedy Love is All You Need. Largely set in Italy, it is a pastiche of glorious sunsets, picturesque villas, a lemon orchard, sparkling wine, and still evenings. And while the characters themselves lead fractured lives, beset with problems like cancer, infidelity, and dysfunctional family relationships, this is a film whose surface more often than not is its substance, refusing to linger over these darker elements. Instead, we are given scene after scene of sunny landscapes and neat floral interiors, as the film ambles at an easy pace to the swaying rhythms of Dean Martin’s That’s Amore.

Trine Dyrholm delivers a superbly controlled performance as Ida, a Danish hairdresser who has undergone treatment for breast cancer. Pain, fear and joy swell alternately beneath her façade of beaming optimism. We are made to genuinely feel for her as a character, and her on-set chemistry with Pierce Brosnan – well-suited to his role as the wealthy British widower Phillip – is certainly palpable.

Molly Blixt Egelind and Sebastian Jessen are for the most part convincing in their portrayals of the engaged couple Astrid and Patrick, although their dialogues – notably when Astrid exclaims: “I am fed up with your lies… so tired of appearances”, and when Patrick, speaking in a cave, talks about his inner emptiness – walk a tightrope between realistically representing two confused young people who have decided to get married having only known each other for three months, and coming across as contrived and annoyingly juvenile. On the whole, this works – but only just.

It is a pity that the film’s Danish title, Den skaldedefrisør (“The Bald Hairdresser”) has been changed in an attempt to cater to a wider international audience. And as a story about two middle-aged people who find love again when they meet during their children’s wedding in the Mediterranean, the plot similarities it shares with Mamma Mia! (2008), also featuring Brosnan as the male lead, are strikingly obvious. Love is All You Need, however, is far more than the sum of its clichéd parts, moving the heart with its subtle beauty and emotional honesty in a story of hope and renewal.