A new Danish film, “The Kiss,” could be said to revolve around romance and a particular osculation, yet its real concerns lean toward the seductive and destructive qualities of pity. Based on “Beware of Pity,” a 1939 novel by an Austrian writer, Stefan Zweig, the plot follows a young Danish lieutenant who befriends an aristocratic widower and his disabled daughter in the run-up to the start of World War I. Despite being set in this fraught time period, the film is a leisurely, old-fashioned melodrama, handsomely directed by Bille August (“Pelle the Conqueror”). Yet somehow it never gets beyond the characters’ facades to turn sympathy into empathy.

Mr. August doesn’t do his picture any favors when he begins it with a twee, music box-type score, as black-and-white footage of cavalry maneuvers is shown during the title sequence. This musical motif will tinkle up periodically throughout, with its sentimentality contradicting the book’s central message: that pity is a selfish, fleeting act. This view is expressed by the film’s doctor character, when he advises protagonist Anton to support the wheelchair-bound Edith not through sorrow but by treating her as a normal person with specific needs. 

Anton’s contact with the wealthy family begins when he orders his squadron to assist Baron Løvenskjold, Edith’s father, after his car stalls in mud. This act of kindness gets him invited to dinner at their castle. After dancing with Anna, Edith’s cousin, the gallant cadet also asks the lady of the house, only to realize she can barely stand, much less dance. This embarrassment, though, will only bring him further into the fold, with each family member using a genteel form of emotional blackmail to compel Anton to keep up his visits to the grand house over the course of the film. 

If all this sounds a bit Victorian, even Gothic, in theme and content — a frail young woman, a dashing soldier, a titled landowner who we’re told has a shady past — the tone at times also comes across as creepy, particularly when Anna or Løvenskjold seem to stalk Anton, entreating him to continue to call on Edith since it improves her depressed, sometimes suicidal, state of mind. Mr. August, though, does not develop this aspect further, preferring to present the plot plainly and earnestly, with pathos the keynote, as if Anton were the director. 

With politesse and uprightness inflaming his innate sensitivity, and vice versa, Anton makes decisions born of pity, emotional expediency, and avoidance, whether when confronted by a fallen horse, Edith’s dying father, or Edith herself. The titular kiss arrives a little after the film’s hour mark, with the maiden’s longing and passion shocking Anton into realizing what is obvious: that she is deeply in love. From this point on, his intentions become ever more noble and convoluted, as he agrees to keep seeing her despite not reciprocating her feelings. He even promises to marry her after she undergoes a curative treatment for her paralysis, a scheme resulting from another of his weak moments. Soon, though, masculine denial, pride, and World War I intervene, leading to inevitable tragedy.

Thanks to its actors, the film’s rather elaborate lesson on the dangers of pity goes down easier than it could. As Anton, the boyish yet formal Esben Smed is the very picture of an eager-to-please, conscientious, inexperienced officer, with the actor’s great attentive eyes and clean-shaven countenance going a long way to selling the character’s naiveté. Clara Rosager portrays Edith as no wilting flower, with the actress’s emotional and physical expressiveness turning potentially sappy scenes — like when her character walks with the aid of just one crutch and then none — into memorable displays of determination, spirit, and intermittent impoliteness. 

As Løvenskjold and Anna, Lars Mikkelsen and Rosalinde Mynster depict deep concern and delicate manipulation skillfully, though one wonders why Edith’s disdain for pity doesn’t extend to her cousin, who delays marrying her fiancé indefinitely due to her caretaking duties. 

With Anton’s various comings and goings from the castle not amounting to much, we’re never allowed to see how someone from a modest, scandal-tinged background (his mother was left by his father) might be seduced by luxury, influence, and respectability, and not just because it affords him the chance to flirt. Nor does Mr. August elaborate on the social pressure from Anton’s fellow soldiers and the dragoon’s codes of conduct, the kind that might drive an ambitious youth to demonstrate his rectitude and fortitude while at the same time dodging his responsibilities in the name of honor. 

As for the impending war, the director and his co-writer, Greg Latter, change the setting of Zweig’s novel to Denmark from Austria-Hungary, with the former’s neutral stance impeding any sense of urgency or anxiety. Still, when war is declared, the filmmakers find a way to get Anton to the frontlines, providing an appropriately stirring, remorsefully effective ending to their look at the limits of and delineations between kindness, compassion, love, and mercy.