06/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: In the new part of his “Sex Dreams Love” trilogy, Norwegian helmer Dag Johan Haugerud’s idea of love strives to be bold but instead feels rather lacklustre

After letting a duo of chimney sweepers contemplate their sexual identity in Sex [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dag Johan Haugerud
film profile] at this year’s Berlinale, Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud offers up the new instalment in his “Sex Love Dreams” trilogy at the 81st Venice Film Festival. Love [+see also:
trailer
interview: Dag Johan Haugerud
film profile] is competing for this year’s Golden Lion.

Once again, it’s set in Oslo, and the city is the dating sandbox of urologist Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and nurse Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen). While professionally, they are experts in the field of the male “package”, their private lives are quite the opposite. Fortysomething Marianne is not sure if she craves emotional intimacy as much as she does the sexual equivalent. After a blind date with the divorced Ole (Thomas Gullestad), she comes across Tor on the ferry back home. In this confined space, the queer younger man is cruising for men he first scopes out on the Grindr dating app. Deep conversations ensue, possibly sex, but never a commitment.

Could this be the solution for Marianne? Dating outside of conventional and societal norms? After all, Oslo seems to be a unicorn of a city, where dating apps actually produce a decent enough flock of singletons who, after trying their luck on the slippery slope of online matching, soon enough manage to score one meet-up. Marianne’s is the encounter with a married man, who wilfully delays revealing that information until after the deed is done. A fun night, but one senses that Marianne is struggling with the throw-away mentality of it. Tor, on the other hand, meets Bjorn (Lars Jacob Holm), with whom he immediately shares an intellectual connection. When the latter turns up at the hospital for a prostatectomy, Tor can’t help but offer his help.

Is this the sexual upheaval the movie promised? It might be a generational divide between the director and this writer, but a good chunk of the questions raised seem to boil down to the common denominator of relationship problems: a lack of communication and self-deception. He is not interested in Bjorn, Tor repeatedly states, yet he keeps checking the surgery schedules. He offers to buy him groceries, with added cuddling benefits. Is this unethical for a medical professional? Sure. Is Tor actually in love? Who knows. “Am I giving off the wrong signals?” he asks Marianne. She, on the other hand, is wondering whether she should keep meeting Ole, given that this would force her to take on responsibility for his daughters.

This wish to rewrite the dating script and yet not break with hetero-normative standards is what makes and breaks this film. Love strives to be bold, and Haugerud may well dip his toe into the water, but he never charts new territory. Any boundary pushing is quickly subdued by the notion that one thrives best in a traditional relationship. It’s an idea that he ironically calls out with Marianne’s friend Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), who is trying to put together an intersectional, inclusive, counter-historic walking tour of the city, but scoffs at Marianne when she tells her about her night with a stranger. “You went straight from Ole to him?” she asks, flabbergasted.

One of the strongest scenes is when Marianne rightfully shrugs off any supposed responsibility she has for either man. But this is not norm-bending. We’ve seen the “sex”, we’ve seen the “love”, but we have yet to witness what Haugerud “dreams” up for his grand finale.

Love was produced by Norway’s Motlys and is sold internationally by m-appeal.