A quiet destructive narrative

"And our mothers dreamed of the future of their husbands, they saw them powerful, revolutionary and lonely, but after praying in the garden leaning over the burning roof, holding the hand of the chattering child of their love. My sad father, why were you silent then and didn't think further?" - Ingeborg Bachmann wrote in the song Curriculum Vitae (translated by Nikolina Zobenica). The verses of the German writer seem to echo in the first two parts of the Norwegian film trilogy cinematic Dag Johan Haugerud, whose silent and "ordinary" heroes want to emerge from silence as a pillar of conformity and social peace. After breaking experiences in their daily lives, they try to see their "new selves" through the eyes of close people and through interaction with them.

photos: promo

To begin with, it is important to emphasize that Sex (premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last year, as part of the official "Panorama" program, where it was awarded the "Teddy" award for the best LGBTQ film in all festival program units) i Love (with a recommended world premiere at the Venice Film Festival also in 2024) follows the final part of the trilogy, the film Dreams (originally shown winter at the Berlinale, while we will have to wait until November). In this regard, since this is a trilogy that was filmed very quickly, the final impression and judgment can only be given at the end of autumn. However, considering what and how they offer Sex i Love, there is every chance (and this is clearly suggested by the available trailer) that i Dreams to remain in the already quite evident stylistic positions, and that there will not be any breakneck twists compared to what was offered and seen in the first two films of the trilogy. And Dag Johan Haugerud stylistically remains unquestionably within the framework of contemporary European naturalistic films of dramatic-melodramatic provenance, or, more precisely, skilfully and unobtrusively deals with the still influential heritage of Scandinavian Dogme 95. Let us remind you – dogma 95 was a film manifesto launched by respected creators Lars von Trier and Thomas Winterberg, a manifesto initially created on the trail of the famous essay by Trypho from the famous Film volumes (Cahiers du cinema). The key features of the venture were filming exclusively on location, with a tone that explicitly comes from the recorded image, with the image always in color and, always, with a hand-held camera, with a strict ban on optical finishing and filters, without artificial/fake action (murders, weapons, fantasy...), while it was mandatory that the film's stories take place here and now, without the influence of a genre film, always with the use of 35 mm tape, and that the director was never signed.

Dag Johan Haugerud largely adhered to the rules of the said manifesto, respecting, of course, what can be respected thirty years later, given the rigid guidelines that, shortly after they were proclaimed, were abandoned by the initiators themselves. However, Haugerud inherits the tradition Dogma where it is most significant and appropriate for the film's story. I Sex i Love peaceful souls can be subsumed under veristically intoned stories in which the author tries to speak colorfully and wisely about the age in which he lives and creates, taking into account the social context of the culture and cinematography in which he works and creates, and obviously not losing sight of universality. U Sex, let's say, we follow (mostly) verbal incidents and accidents, one would say a shy and not at all excessive chimney sweep who starts confessing his first homosexual experience to his neighbors without hesitation, which happened quite casually when, namely, the user of the service looked at him nicely and asked if he was for sex. On the other hand, in Love we witness (and Dag Johan Haugerud, although it is a fully acted structure, applies a largely documentary approach known as a fly on the wall, which means a close and not at all intrusive observation of a self-chosen situation) of quiet love and sexual upheavals in the life of a young urologist and her also young medical brother. dogma 95 it is strikingly present in both cases, above all in the application of consistent verism and in the intimate drama that no one could label as false on any basis. It is simply about quiet and more or less archetypal stories about transformative life experiences, the revolutionary/treacherous essence of which we can easily imagine as something that could happen to our acquaintances on a very ordinary day, that is, to those who live outside the borders of Western or Northern European economic lull. In this way, we come to the point where we have a sufficiently convincing basis for such a reading Dogme 95 - but according to the standards and tastes of our days - wrapped in the wafer of a discreet mental dramedy of easy confusions, let's mark it as universal.

In both parts of the trilogy, Dag Johan Haugerud boldly and without deviation adheres to the naturalistic approach, with the frequent use of a static camera, which results in a striking variation on the documentary expression, additionally underlined by the hyper-verbalized urges of the actors in both stories. At the same time, one gets the impression that the unforced verbosity was received only after lived experiences that the heroes, with more or less awareness, recognize as transformative twists that, without any noise, shatter and then thoroughly grind their daily routines, and just as discreetly and irrevocably, their worldviews. The dynamics and essence of their relationships with the immediate environment do not fare any better.

photo: promo

When it comes to the hyper-verbalization of the narrative, it should be noted that Dag Johan Haugerud and Sean Baker, the freshest Oscar winner, found themselves on the same ideological level. And in Baker's extraordinary and extremely entertaining film Anora it searches for the limits of appropriate and organic dialogue duration in clearly organized scenes and segments. Haugerud is here, it seems, somewhat more radical and obstinate (introductory scene in Sex lasts twenty minutes), but we might dare to establish how the differences between Baker and Haugerod correspond, more or less, to the differences between canonical films with official stamps Dogme 95 and other European dramatic and arthouse films of that era, at the turn between two centuries and two millennia. At the same cost, the court can be ordered to give it as a result (and especially in the case Sex which, it seems, had a slightly more modest budget than Love) gives the impression that the Norwegian author here willingly rushes into the jaws of camera expression (which, let's note, is only a few steps away from disastrous theatricality). Fortunately, Dag Johan Haugerud obviously knows where and when to stop, and in both films he has found the appropriate measure, i.e. the limit of the assumed viewer's willingness to endure an emphatically camera-driven and narrated setting within a medium that both explicitly and implicitly promises excitement and dynamism. Without disputing Baker's authorial uniqueness, nor the edge of an independent filmmaker, we note that he nevertheless creates under the heavy and inevitable shadow of "neighboring" Hollywood, and this can slow down the libertarian efforts of the hero as his Anora, and so did the Haugeruds Sex i Love.

Sex i Love are, as a whole, and in relation to each other, very good films. It is easy to see the thread of gradation from more reduced to more ambitious structures and measures, which is more than enough pledge to give a chance and full audience focus to the third part of the trilogy in the fall. Dreams. After all, it should be emphasized that winters have passed Dreams declared the best film in the main competition program of the Berlin Film Festival. The stories, although conceived and structured as quick witticisms, are fun, drinkable and fluid, the narration is transparent and not offensive at all, the heroes are undeniably charming with their awkwardness, with which the viewers can easily and quickly identify, with the fence that Haugerud in both cases succumbed to the challenge of ending the low-intensity drama. Fortunately, there is compensation for that minimal disappointment in the ending itself. Unlike movies with a scar Dogme 95 – with the exception of Vinterberg Celebrations (The party, 1998) – Haugerud offers an abundance of subtle, utterly ordinary, yet utterly effective humor. The turbulence into which his heroes and heroines are thrown, or into which they fatefully fall, does not seem any less rooted or authentic. If nothing else, in the eyes of strict and direct judges, at least they cannot be denied that, like those to whom Ingeborg Bachmann addressed and wrote, they remained silent and did not think further.