« Oslo Stories: Dreams » is a film pearl: cinema with rousing empathy

The first erotic desire awakened by a gesture in a novel. Johanne (Ella Øgere) found the book in the hut of her grandmother and devoured within a winter vacation. In the old romance novel, the lover of the female main character gently wraps a wool scarf around her neck three times before going outside. The tender, caring gesture triggers a wave of well-being in the 17-year-old reader. From then on, the germ of a longing lives in her who is only waiting to develop all his strength.

Now the French teacher Johanna (Selome Emnetu) enters the classroom. In the morning backlight the charismatic, young woman shines in Paris And lived New York in full beauty. Johanne falls in love with her. Just looking at the up rolled -up wool sweater, which hugs the tender skin on the forearm of the teacher, puts the girl into the state of complete excitement. Obsession she is looking for Johanna closeness – and decides to confess her love to the adored. But when she stands in front of Johanna’s apartment door, she doesn’t put out a word with tears.

« Oslo Stories: Dreams » examines the bewitching intoxication of the first love

In « Oslo Stories: Dreams »the one this year at the Berlinale deservedly won the golden bear, the Norwegian filmmaker and writer Dag Johan Hauberud examined the beguiling frenzy of a first love. It is the second part of his Oslo trilogy. « Love » is already running in the cinema, « longing » follows on May 22nd. With maximum empathy, the film throws itself into the subjective world of the 17-year-old’s main character, whose voice from the off-road describes the events with an amazing wordiness and ability to reflect. The enthusiastic transfiguration, the emotional radicality and the painful suffering of a first, great, unfulfilled love are examined with enthusiastic richness of detail.

But then the film takes a step back with his protagonist. A year has passed. Johanne captured her first amorous experiences in a 93-page manuscript. She always carries the USB stick with the text file with her until she wants to share her secret with someone. Grandmother Karin (Anne Marit Jacobsen) – a writer and confessing feminist – primarily recognizes the literary qualities of the text, while her mother Kristin (Ane Dahl Torp) senses for the first time in view of the intimate details of sexual abuse.

Haubereud shows the great feelings and gradual disillusionment

But Karin can convince her that this is not the revelations of a victim, but the literary exploration of a first love. She wants to show her publisher’s book and is convinced that it has a chance of publication. Now that the memories no longer belong to her alone, Johannes is increasingly changing feelings. In the discussions of mother, grandmother and publisher, the subjective experiences are categorized. The different generations of women do not look at the force of feelings without envy. What was a clear, singular experience beforehand now comes into the disenchanting mills of complexity.

Both – the great feeling and gradual disillusionment – shows Haubereud with the same, never evaluating intensity. The figures, even if they are different, always in dialogue and find that deeply impartiality that, as a warm, (wonderfully outdated) humanistic spirit, blows through all films from Haubereud. « Dreams » is driven by an extraordinary emotional intelligence, the feeling and intellect never understands as a contradiction, but as a complementary, personal whole. This also shows how Haubereud melt literary off comment and sensual visuality in the first half of the film. Films of such rousing empathy and joyful complexity are a real rarity – and a soothing antidote in an age, the social discourses of which are primarily shaped by polarizations.