28/01/2025 - Lorenz Suter tackles the topic of parenthood, cannily playing with the concepts of reality and fiction, the difficulties of everyday life, and the desire to escape to reassuring parallel worlds

After depicting an ambiguous love triangle which turns to tragedy in his first feature film Strangers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lorenz Suter
film profile], Lorenz Suter is now presenting Norma Dorma - where the concept of a couple of once again overturned - in a world premiere within the Solothurn Film Festival’s Panorama section, and in the running for the Orizzonti Prize. Both works are shrouded in a veil of mystery, as if the reality in which its protagonists are operating were crumbling, frame by frame. How do you come to terms with the disappearance of the person you thought you could build a future with? What drove that person to run away? Norma (Marina Guerrini), the protagonist in Suter’s latest feature film, reluctantly finds herself facing these dilemmas, forced to accept radical changes which she definitely hadn’t envisaged.

Norma needs to protect herself from a reality that’s too hard to accept, from an inner void which is turning into a treacherous sinkhole. Her partner has mysteriously disappeared and her son, Lenny, seems to be growing up too quickly, as if time had broken the banks which channel and contain him. Norma fights tooth and nail to stay above water, between her now-mundane job and still-small child who requires her constant presence. Reality is becoming too cruel and brutal for her, so Norma opts to take refuge in parallel worlds where all kinds of problems seem solvable. In these paradisiacal yet troubling universes, she meets and communicates with a partner called Henri, an ambiguous character who harasses and seduces her.

Norma realises that the parallel experiences she’s embarking on aren’t limited to the dreamworld. The mark they leave on her is deeper and more profound, like a scorch mark on her soul which she can’t and doesn’t want to heal. One morning, she wakes to find herself mysteriously pregnant, feeling a tangle of emotions ranging from happiness to terror in response to this physical change which seems to embody all of her repressed hopes. It’s at this point that her already chaotic life is disrupted by Mikka (Jeanne Werner), a young sleep scientist whom Norma learns is connected to her partner who’s also a university researcher. Maybe Mikka will provide her with the key to her son’s father’s past and to the secrets which drove him to step back before vanishing into thin air? Like a hippie Charon, Mikka shows Norma the road towards a surreal world caught between dreams and lysergic delirium. Norma relaxes into Kafkaesque journeys where her family is once again reunited, a seemingly “perfect” family composed of happy and enviably relaxed parents, and equally calm and gentle children. But what hides behind this seemingly idyllic tableau? The dream subsequently turns into an abyss which swallows up our protagonist, detaching her from reality.

Norma Dorma is a surreal melodrama where reality and fiction go head-to-head with no holds barred. Parenthood is central to this union - parenthood which the protagonist would rather conformed to social norms, consisting of a partner and two children, peacefully and harmoniously cohabitating under the same roof. But her partner’s disappearance sees this normality deteriorating before her eyes. In her dreams, she’s still drawn like a magnet to the idea of the “perfect” family, which society has convinced her is “natural”, the ultimate objective for an existence aspiring to productivity and reproduction. But, in the face of professional and personal lives which are far from standard, she realises it’s all an illusion. Norma must learn to accept the “imperfection” and “difference” which are now a part of her everyday life, she must learn to live with them and reassess her dreams and ideals. For is it not the knowledge of our own convention-defying uniqueness which sets us free? And is it not the acceptance of diversity which teaches Norma to look inside of herself without fear?

Norma Dorma was produced by Voltafilm.

(Translated from Italian)