Review: Home Sweet Home
by Olivia Popp
- BERLINALE 2025: Frelle Petersen’s newest film comes to the big screen with a subdued portrayal of elderly caregiving as a thankless yet crucial job through the eyes of a young working mother
Unseen labour, undervalued work: Danish filmmaker Frelle Petersen comes to the 75th Berlinale clutching his fourth film, Home Sweet Home [+see also:
interview: Frelle Petersen
film profile], which has just world-premiered in the Panorama sidebar. Written, directed and edited by Petersen, the nearly two-hour work sketches a fictional, albeit seemingly true-to-life, portrait of younger workers in the elderly-care industry – its small joys, of course, but more so the intensity of its responsibilities that leave little room for error, lest complaints emerge or a patient is injured because of a lack of proper care. Petersen picks up the features baton after his previous film, Forever [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Frelle Petersen and Jette S…
film profile], which world-premiered in the 2022 San Sebastián competition strand.
Young working mother Sofie (Jette Søndergaard, who has made appearances in all four of Petersen's films) effectively manages three jobs. She works her new gig as a home caregiver for the elderly, her job as a gymnastics instructor and her role as a mother for her ten-year-old daughter Clara (Mimi Bræmer Dueholm), whom she shares custody of with her ex-husband. Home Sweet Home is focused on Sofie’s profession caring for the elderly as paid for by the state – a regimented job, where every task is measured out in minutes and the workers must deal with the messiness of patient care alongside less frequent but still painful incidents of outbursts, dismissiveness and rudeness from the entitled adult children of the elderly.
Petersen’s pacing highlights the immense monotony of the job, but even an intentionally flat rhythm can render a feeling of frustration among the most patient of viewers. Although the drama in Sofie’s work life picks up beginning at the film’s halfway point, the filmmaker seeks to repeatedly stress the thankless nature of the job, driving his point home at the expense of affective proximity; we are afforded few true moments with Sofie alone, for instance, to just take in her perspective. This is perhaps further aggravated by Petersen’s distanced approach to all of his characters, who are all carefully observed in their environments with cinematography by Jørgen Johansson, through which we are left hungry for more emotional closeness.
While forming close relationships with several elderly people she cares for – including Else (Karen Tygesen), Grethe (Inger Sophie Andersen), Vera (Christa Paulsen), Per (Henry Sørensen) and others – she butts heads with the lazy Frederick, who doesn’t take care of his patients as he should. Although she is personable and compassionate, Sofie’s struggles and emotional journey are easy to empathise with from the start – but as a character, she becomes mildly forgettable, making each episodic series of home visits feel longer than they are. Sometimes laborious but never slow, Home Sweet Home comes to the Berlinale as a plodding portrayal of an oft-emotionally overwhelming field of work, its depiction strong enough to carry its weight the whole way through, but it never manages to relay the urgency necessary to grip the viewer fully in light of its length.
Home Sweet Home is a Danish production by Zentropa Entertainments, with TrustNordisk handling its world sales.
Photogallery 16/02/2025: Berlinale 2025 - Home Sweet Home
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