Dag Johan Haugerud’s candid look at constricting gender roles centers on two friends spurred by different experiences to readjust their sense of self.
Had your fill of punishing investigations into toxic masculinity? Then the thoughtful questioning, sensitivity, low-key humor and refreshing candor of Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’sdid with romantic comedy, this superbly acted drama’s refusal to serve up tidy epiphanies might leave you wanting more. But the inchoate nature of the central characters’ self-reflection is partly the point in a smart movie with a lot on its mind.
When the frame eventually shifts to reveal his employee , there’s some dry amusement in the discovery that the supervisor isn’t even a Bowie fan. But the director never makes fun of the openness and honesty in these two men’s conversations, which are the heart of the film. He also shares that he went home and told his wife of 20 years , maintaining that he doesn’t regard the interlude as cheating because there’s no hiding or lying involved. She doesn’t quite see it that way, and while there are no hysterical arguments about infidelity, she can’t let it go the next day when he just wants to talk about plans for the garden or take their sons to dinner at Ikea. When she worries he might be gay, he says, “Having one beer doesn’t make me an alcoholic.
There are a lot of layers both in Haugerud’s screenplay and in the two principal actors’ performances, subtly touching on the ways in which codes of masculinity have inhibited them, perhaps causing them to suppress parts of their nature, particularly in terms of their sexuality. Both seem to welcome a new sense of vulnerability, maybe even of a previously untapped feminine side that equates not with weakness but with personal freedom.
Haugerud’s screenplay deftly expands its thoughts on gender roles and expectations by observing the two men’s teenage sons, without ever becoming schematic. In one funny scene, Klaus sits working away — the image of a teenage boy at a sewing machine suggests a younger generation with fewer gender hangups — alongside his father and mother while they discuss developments with the chimney sweeper. Only the slightest sideways glance from Klaus at one point indicates that the boy is even remotely interested.
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