22/09/2010

One of the most highly anticipated titles in competition at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival is Home for Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bent Hamer
film profile], the latest work of Norwegian director Bent Hamer.

The screenplay by the writer-director is based on a collection of stories by Levi Henriksen called Only Soft Presents Under The Tree and weaves together several stories that all happen on Christmas Eve in one snow-covered Norwegian village.

Stories include those of a man who dresses as Santa Claus so he can see his children and ex-wife again without them knowing it is him; a former football star-turned-drunk who wants to go home for the holidays; a woman who believes that her married lover will finally leave his wife after Christmas; a schoolboy who pretends his Protestant family isn’t into Christmas so he can be with his pretty Muslim classmate; and a Serbian-Albanian couple with a dark past stranded in an isolated cottage.

Closer to the Christmas-induced, fuzzy sweetness of Love Actually [+see also:
trailer
film profile] than the languid pace and oft-kilter humour of some of his previous films (O'Horten [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Kitchen Stories), Home for Christmas nonetheless has some place for a couple of quirky laughs and a little melancholy and even sadness, making for a rather satisfying whole that is uplifting without becoming to syrupy (though the ending borders on kitsch).

The film, which bowed at the Toronto Film Festival before its European premiere at the festival in the Basque Country, is a co-production between the director’s Norwegian production house BulBul Films, the Swedes of Filmimperiet (film was largely shot in Sweden), and the Germans of Pandora Filmproduktion, who previously co-produced O’Horten. ZDF and ARTE also backed the project, which is sold by Cologne-based The Match Factory.

Home will have its Norwegian premiere at the Bergen Film Festival in October before its release, through Sandrew Metronome, in November.