A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Saturday, February 7, 2026

Love (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024)

Andrea Bræin Hovig and Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen in Love

Cast: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen, Marte Engebritsen, Lars Jacob Holm, Tomas Gullestad, Marian Saastad Ottesen, Morten Svartveit. Screenplay: Dag Johan Haugerud. Cinematography: Cecilie Semec. Production design: Tuva Hølmebakk. Film editing: Jens Christian Fodstad. Music: Peder Kjellsby. 

What do we talk about when we talk about love? Sex? Commitment? Fidelity? Selflessness? In Dag Johan Haugerud's engaging Love, part of his "Oslo trilogy," the characters talk about all of those things and sometimes act upon them. The film centers on Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), a urologist, and Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen), a nurse, who meet after work on a commuter ferry from Oslo to the Nesodden peninsula. Tor reveals to Marianne that he's on Grindr and often uses it to meet other gay men on the ferry. He's happily unattached and enjoys talking with the men he meets almost as much as he does having sex with them. The conversation sparks something in Marianne: She's middle-aged and unmarried, which doesn't seem to bother her as much as it bothers her friends, who keep trying to set her up. In fact, she's on her way to meet an eligible divorcé her friend Heidi (Marte Engebritsen) thinks is a good match for her. Marianne goes on Tinder, trying out Tor's methods, and has a brief hookup with a passenger she meets that way. It doesn't work out quite as smoothly as Tor suggests it does, but then neither does Tor's encounter with Bjørn (Lars Jacob Holm), a psychologist who becomes a patient in the clinic where Marianne and Tor work. Haugerud's delicate, knowing approach to his characters makes Love work splendidly.   

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