Love – first-look review

Con­tent­ment is arguably bet­ter than hap­pi­ness, for what it lacks in gid­dy ebul­lience, it makes up for in a com­fort­able, lin­ger­ing peace. In Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love, Mar­i­anne (Andrea Bræin Hov­ig) says she is hap­py, but what she seems to be is con­tent. Curios­i­ty about the per­son­al and the pri­vate with­in the human body led her to a career in urol­o­gy and a job that most­ly com­pris­es telling men about their prostate can­cer diag­no­sis. But Mar­i­anne isn’t all that fazed to be the bear­er of bad news. It’s life, peo­ple go on.

Haugerud’s sec­ond entry in his Sex/​Love/​Dreams tril­o­gy jux­ta­pos­es Marianne’s aloof­ness with the per­son­abil­i­ty of her nurse, Tor (Tayo Cit­tadel­la Jacob­sen). If the doc­tor is prag­mat­ic, the nurse is heart­felt, fol­low­ing patients out of the office to ensure their emo­tion­al well-being as well as their phys­i­cal. This is why it comes as a sur­prise to Mar­i­anne to find out Tor is going back and forth from Oslo on the fer­ry in the hopes of meet­ing the men he spots on Grindr. From the app, the nurse moves things out to the deck, where the urgency of a short com­mute makes things all the more exciting.

And there­in lies the cen­tral con­ver­sa­tion of Love, a film eager to explore the mod­ern meta­mor­pho­sis of human rela­tion­ships as ties once so con­strict­ed by the rigid rules of insti­tu­tions become much more flu­id. Hov­ig plays Mar­i­anne with mut­ed inquis­i­tive­ness, atten­tive­ly lis­ten­ing to her green­er co-work­er as she feels her own notions of what is accept­able and what isn’t begin to shift. In turn, Jacob­sen encap­su­lates the easy­go­ing charm of the beau­ti­ful and young, but with an under­cur­rent of yearn­ing that makes for a sur­pris­ing­ly touch­ing per­for­mance. A hand­ful of sec­ondary char­ac­ters come in and out to sup­port the story’s cen­tral through­line, from a recent­ly divorced geol­o­gist eager to find love again to an age­ing man whose can­cer diag­no­sis has him reliv­ing the pain that comes from fac­ing a life denied of pleasure.

Although there is a wel­come pal­pa­bil­i­ty in these char­ac­ters and their plights, there is also a cer­tain sense of aim­less­ness as Haugerud ham­mers in on issues of sex­u­al free­dom and sex­ism to get his cap­i­tal P point across. This insis­tence also presents an odd dichoto­my, as Love feels at once lengthy and rushed, with inter­est­ing metaphors on the geog­ra­phy of the land and that of the body intro­duced ear­ly on and then left unex­plored, set aside in favour of over­stretched – and, at times, over­ex­posed – dialogue.

It feels a shame, too, that a film about love but, cru­cial­ly, also about sex plays out so tame­ly. The bod­ies on screen, so great­ly scru­ti­nised through words, are spared any inter­est­ing visu­al scruti­ny, with Haugerud and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Cecilie Semec fram­ing the char­ac­ters through an odd­ly chaste lens. Even the sex itself, present yet scarce, feels void of any sliv­er of pas­sion, a mere­ly prac­ti­cal inter­lude where limbs inter­lock but nev­er tru­ly con­nect — almost as ster­ile as Marianne’s con­sult­ing room. Sad­ly, with­out insight into the inti­ma­cy of com­mu­nion, many of the con­ver­sa­tions Haugerud brings to the fore end up lay­ing a bit too close to the didactic.