In recent years, Norwegian cinema has been wonderfully preoccupied with the messiness of being human. Adding to Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World (2021), Yngvild Sve Flikke’s Ninjababy (2021), Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Myself (2022) and Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s Loveable (2024) is a charming set of three films by writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud, the Sex Love Dreams trilogy. After premieres in Berlin and Venice, and stellar festival runs worldwide, the trilogy made its way to Dublin, with all three films getting an August release.
Inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy, Haugerud designed a cinematic conference. Sex, Love and Dreams are stylistically and thematically similar but not quite so. All comic dramas set in the Norwegian capital, the films are engaged in a discourse with the wider world, but more importantly with each other. The setting brings to mind Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy, but that is where the comparison ends. Haugerud doesn’t have one but three Oslos, each with an identity of its own. The city is a creature dutifully playing its part in his tales of desire.
Sex
Sex, the first film in the instalment, is hard to outline in words. It is the story of two unnamed chimney sweeps, both in monogamous, heterosexual marriages, who find themselves in complex situations: one (Thorbjørn Harr, credited as ‘the CEO’) has detailed dreams about being perceived as a woman (by David Bowie allegedly), and the other (Jan Gunnar Røise, credited as ‘the worker’) has sex with a man but doesn’t see it as infidelity or an expression of homosexuality.
Haugerud opens his film with a 15-minute-long scene showing the two protagonists discussing their experiences with each other. This discussion seeps into their households, exposing the dynamics of the two marriages. Cecilie Semec, the cinematographer of the trilogy, operates her camera on a combination of immobility and slow pans, bringing a stillness to an especially verbose film. The dialogue never gets overwhelming, and the conversations are never overblown despite the tricky subject matters. Gently subversive, the CEO and the worker, with their wives (Birgitte Larsen and Siri Forberg respectively), question, challenge and deconstruct masculinity.
Sex is ironically the least erotic story of the trilogy. In spite of not including a single sexual scene, it is more honest about sex than most other films. Without resorting to drama or shock, it creates an emotionally inquisitive, funny and mature narrative. Oslo in Sex is a city of chimneys, cranes and construction sites; it is a verb. And like the conversations between the characters, it is in a perpetual state of becoming.
Love
Love (Kjærlighet) follows Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen), doctor and nurse colleagues, who grow closer following an after-hours conversation on a ferry. Tor explains his unconventional routine of taking the late boat back and forth while looking for fellow passengers on a gay dating app, leading to knowing glances, conversations and even casual sex. This freewheeling attitude towards human connection inspires Marianne. She deliberates pursuing a relationship with Ole Harald, a twice-divorced geologist who shares custody of his children with his ex-wife (who lives next door). Tor, on the other hand, starts feeling a strange draw towards Bjorn, whom he meets on the ferry and then again, as a patient.
These burgeoning relationships are treated with real tenderness. Though the film is often funny, the humour is never at the expense of the characters, who, despite (or perhaps because of) their messy lives, feel exquisitely human. The dynamic between Marianne and Tor is a particular highlight, as we see how his strong sense of empathy complements her no-nonsense intellect, both in their work and in their friendship.
The plot is not as focused, but it is still a pleasure spending two hours in Love’s colourful Oslo. Haugerud has a keen sense of the power of place, which permeates through his work,
contrasting the main city and the idyllic island of Norbudden, with the ferry functioning as a liminal in-between space for characters to be free from the responsibilities of solid ground.
This film is a look at modern love that feels refreshing and warm, compared to this year’s vaguely depressing Materialists, Celine Song’s star-studded sophomore feature.
Dreams
Dreams (Drømmer), winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, is Haugerud’s take on the well-worn “first love” story. It concerns Johanne (Ella Øverbye), an intelligent and introspective seventeen-year-old who falls “head over heels in love” with Johanna, her French teacher. We hear about this not-quite relationship in the past tense as Johanne writes a book about her experiences, provoking very different reactions from her mother (Ane Dahl Torp) and grandmother (Anne Marit Jacobsen).
Is the text evidence of abuse or a literary love letter to be celebrated? Johanne’s mother’s and grandmother’s differing (and constantly shifting) perspectives highlight a clash between second and third wave feminism without reducing either character to a boring ideologue. Haugerud is never didactic, letting the characters speak for themselves (and no one is more cogent than Johanne). The film doesn’t infantilise its protagonist or reduce her to a helpless ingénue, but shows her to be perceptive, emotionally intelligent and sensitive despite her obsessive and inappropriate crush.
Dreams doesn’t get bogged down in intellectualism or dreaded discourse. It nails the all-consuming and debilitating strength of early love in all its intensity and pain. The real brilliance of the film is that it reminds us that our feelings are beautiful, even if embarrassing, inappropriate, undeserved or unrequited. What better way to conclude this trilogy about the grey areas of the human experience?
