a diverse and healthy society
by
Douglas Messerli
Dag
Johan Haugerud (screenwriter and director) Kjærlighet (Love) /
2024
The
third of Norwegian director and writers Dag Johan Haugerud’s film trilogy of
2024, consisting of Sex, Dreams, and Love,* all of which I
felt represent some of the very best of 21st Century filmmaking, Love has
now become my favorite. As Guardian reviewer Peter Bradshow puts it:
“Haugerud
has something of Eric Rohmer, and perhaps a little more of Hong Sang-soo; a
readiness to simply talk, and talk and talk some more. It’s surprisingly
cinematic.”
Here
the talk is perhaps so cinematic because it is real; one sees the characters
actually listening, questioning what is being said, and gently responding. This
is a totally quiet film without the general dramatic fireworks of so many
movies. I can’t even imagine today such conversations between a doctor, in this
case Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her male nurse Tor (Tayo Cittadella
Jacobsen), occurring in the US. These people respect and admire each other,
unafraid to share their deepest discussions about themselves, their sexual
activities, and their approaches to life. Perhaps the only even slightly shrill
voice is Marianne’s friend, Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), who works for the municipality
of Oslo and is attempting to create a useful and audience friendly theme for
that city’s celebration of its democratic values.
In one of the first scenes of the movie, we
follow Heidi on a tour in which she explains how each public sculpture,
structure, and location in some way celebrates the sexual and gender diversity of
the city’s history. For example, she interprets the sculpture on the wall of
the City Hall with three women with children as revealing its approval of both
“single mothers and same-sex parenthood.”
But later she is high discouraged when the
city “father’s” seem to be more interested in having Knausgård do a project on
the second World War. This is a kind of in-joke for Norwegians who immediately recognize
the reference to one of their currently most popular writers, Karl Ove Knausgård,
whose famed My Struggle (Min Kamp) series of
autobiographical memoirs, echoing Hitler’s title Mein Kampf, which are
almost entirely male-oriented even while they represent fascinating writing. By
film’s end Heidi is able to convince the city to use the money to allow greater
access of its citizens to city and governmental institutions and facilities; so
she does obtain some of her objectives if not all.
Marianne practices medicine as a urologist,
who has the unfortunate job of telling men that they have prostrate cancer,
offering them choices of the obvious options of chemotherapy, surgery, or
simply waiting it out. She has learned to be quiet and careful in her
conversations, and more than patient in waiting for and answering their
questions.
Thor, who often sits in on these
consultations, however, is even more alert to her patient’s confusion about the
verdict, and their lack of deep questions. Just as women are often not fully
served by their male doctors who cannot fuller answer the full ramifications of
their cancer’s affects on their sexual lives, so he, late in the film, explains
to Marianne that what she is not perceiving is that in many if not most of
these men’s lives, they may never again get a full erection, with the help of
Viagra or other such stimulants; moreover, for the many gay men they see, she does
not comprehend that the loss of the prostrate will also remove much of the joy
of anal sex.
These scenes had a personal effect on me,
who, quite young, was told I had prostrate cancer, and almost immediately chose
to have a full operation (which indeed saved my life), but was not fully told
how it might effect my possibilities of erection and the simple pleasures of
sex. No one ever talks about how much the production of semen is part of the
joy of gay sex, when it is not being simply a carrier of new babies, but as an
expression of sharing.
Tor is gay, and is perhaps even a more
caring and listening person than the highly competent Marianne.
Heidi plays another important role in
this film by inviting her friend Marianne to the nearby island of Nesodden,
where she lives, and has found a man, a divorced father with two daughters, Ole
(Thomas Gullestad), who she believes would be a perfect match for the doctor.
And indeed, Marianne finds him charming, but also so devoted to his daughters
and his ex-wife, Solveig (Marian Saastad Ottesen), who lives next door and who
Marianne wrongly judges as being bi-polar, that she is not quite ready to
engage in the entire new retinue of responsibilities and difficulties that such
a relationship might entail.
If some critics such as Simon Abrams see
this simply as being her own “hang-ups,” I’d argue as a caring and thinking
person, she simply recognizes that she might not be the right solution to the
needs of this man, who has already had two wives. She loves her career as much
as Ole loves his daughters and still cares for Solveig.
Tor also lives on Nesodden, and she
encounters him on the ferry returning to Oslo. When asked what he is doing on
the ferry at this hour, Tor openly explains to her that he often rides the
ferry sometimes when he can’t sleep and restless back and forth, checking out
on Grindr who might be sharing the voyage with him, meeting up with them, and
sometimes finding a secluded corner on the deck to share sex. But sometimes, he
admits, it’s just a glance. “Mostly we just talk,” but for him it’s the thrill,
“Meeting someone’s gaze and realizing we’re both ‘on’.” It’s a bit like cruising,
which he explains when she doesn’t quite comprehend the concept, “It’s going to
certain places to have casual sex.” “There are many cruising spots. Often secluded
parts of parks or woods, where men go to meet other men.”
“But
not just that. On this boat, we mostly just talk.” And sometimes even in a
park, he adds, “you sit down and talk after having sex. …You may not know their
name. Maybe you never will. And being on neutral ground creates this…strange,
yet pleasant closeness. Which makes opening up feel so natural.”
When Marianne asks what they talk about,
Thor tries to explain that the people are so varied. “Some are still in the
closet. And some don’t see themselves as gay at all. They just enjoy sex with
men. And some are very sad and ridden with guilt. Maybe they’ve snuck out of
family dinners or children’s parties and need to talk about it. Some just want
to talk about coming out.”
Marianne, in turn, explains that she
wishes she could just have sex with the Nesodden guy and been over with it.
I can’t remember a movie that has had
such a genuinely honest discussion between a gay man and a straight woman in ages.
Sometimes it’s so hard to imagine a straight person comprehending all Thor has
just told her, or perhaps it’s so difficult for a heterosexual woman like
Marianne to explain to a gay man why at one moment she just grabbed her date by
the butt, something she could never before imagine herself doing.
Thor in the meantime makes a nodding relationship with a man clearly
suffering, Björn (Lars Jacob Holm) whom he encounters again a few days later in
Marianne’s office, he now also facing prostate cancer. Despite Marianne’s
advice that he should not act as nurse outside of the hospital as well, Thor
offers his help. And a few days later, he receives a call from Björn, who is
having a hard time of it, and that day has no one to help him get groceries.
Thor not only cares for him the entire
day, but stays the night, hugging him closely and perhaps beginning a true
relationship while even knowing it will not offer sex. But that is the kind of
people Haugerud’s very true human beings are, people who care and love even
when it might not offer them the greatest of fulfillments.
Marianne does return to Ole and share sex with him, both of them
enjoying one another; but we are not sure the relationship will ever come to
anything, particularly when after, Marianne sits down with Solveig to hear her
story, ending up with the doctor inviting her to lunch one day in Oslo where
they can further talk, perhaps leading to a real friendship.
Heidi, meanwhile, is more than a little
taken aback when her friend Marianne describes her ferry experience with an
unknown man. It simply doesn’t fit, as critic Abrams suggests, “the social entrenched
norms based on gender, marital status, or sexual orientation.” Yet, these are
precisely the people Heidi is describing in her statement’s Oslo’s great
diversity. And it is clear Haugerud truly loves his city because of that fact.
His beautiful film, moreover, benefits from a truly gorgeous musical score by Peder
Kjellsby and the cinematography of Cecilie Semec.
In the last scene, our two heroes meet
up once more on the ferry, both impatient, despite their night’s explorations
in love, to return to work. I think that is what we describe as a healthy society.
I now believe Haugerud to be one of the
most notable filmmakers of our time; but perhaps because of his quietness and
love of dialogue, he will go unnoticed. I truly hope not.
Los
Angeles, June 5, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).
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