More Than Ever

After a vis­it to the infa­mous beach in M Night Shyamalan’s Old and a trip to Fårö in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, Vicky Krieps this time search­es for ful­fil­ment in the ice-cold Nor­we­gian fjords in Emi­ly Atef’s More Than Ever.

Female char­ac­ters search­ing their soul while float­ing in water is a rather hack­neyed sta­ple of con­tem­po­rary indie film­mak­ing, but it’s done beau­ti­ful­ly here. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Yves Cape keeps the cam­era so close to Krieps’ body that it is ren­dered abstract – its peaks and curves become a land­scape, a shoul­der trans­forms into a moun­tain and goose­bumps into rocky ground. The images mir­ror the hills sur­round­ing the fjord, an almost meta­phys­i­cal space which Krieps’ char­ac­ter can’t stop visu­al­is­ing when she’s con­fined to her flat in Bor­deaux, inspir­ing her to make the pil­grim­age to Nor­way for real.

Krieps plays Hélène, a thir­ty-some­thing grap­pling with a rare lung dis­ease and the strain it places on her mar­riage to Math­eiu, played by the late Gas­pard Ulliel in his penul­ti­mate role. Already melan­cholic in tone, the knowl­edge of Ulliel’s trag­ic death in Jan­u­ary 2022 casts a huge shad­ow over the film. His char­ac­ter is fierce­ly resis­tant to his wife’s ter­mi­nal prog­no­sis, deter­mined that she should under­go risky and inva­sive surgery for a chance at sur­vival. His cast­ing can’t help but ren­der the role more impact­ful, though to say so feels like a dis­ser­vice as it’s a truth­ful per­for­mance that encom­pass­es the emo­tion­al tur­bu­lence of love, grief, frus­tra­tion and ter­ror at help­less­ly wit­ness­ing your partner’s health deteriorate.

We first meet Hélène in a state of alter­nat­ing apa­thy and fury. Dragged by Math­eiu to a din­ner par­ty, she can’t stand either her friends’ sym­pa­thy or the pre­tence that noth­ing is wrong. She eschews New-Agey web­sites about ter­mi­nal ill­ness and instead forges a friend­ship with a can­cer patient in Nor­way via his pho­tog­ra­phy blog. Krieps, as always, is immense­ly watch­able but this open­ing sec­tion feels some­what inert and it takes far too long for Hélène to set off on her voy­age of self-dis­cov­ery to Nor­way, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that it’s hard­ly a sur­pris­ing turn of events. Things get more inter­est­ing once she arrives as she builds a con­nec­tion with the online friend who isn’t what she expect­ed while her rela­tion­ship with Math­eiu begins to fracture.

Although she strug­gles with the per­pet­u­al day­light, Hélène comes to terms with her fate, walk­ing the hills sur­round­ing the fjord and around the aching­ly taste­ful inte­ri­ors of her Scan­di-chic cab­in. It’s all oh-so aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing and would no doubt be approved of by the Nor­we­gian tourist board, but, aside from a love­ly visu­al gag about the one hill with phone sig­nal being packed with locals, there’s lit­tle that’s unex­pect­ed here. As demon­strat­ed by the film’s final third, Atef evi­dent­ly has a skill for craft­ing humane, some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ters and for draw­ing out com­pelling per­for­mances. And yet as inter­est­ing as the inter­per­son­al dra­ma should be, it might just leave you, as Mon­ty Python would say, pin­ing for the fjords.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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