Contentment is arguably better than happiness, for what it lacks in giddy ebullience, it makes up for in a comfortable, lingering peace. In Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) says she is happy, but what she seems to be is content. Curiosity about the personal and the private within the human body led her to a career in urology and a job that mostly comprises telling men about their prostate cancer diagnosis. But Marianne isn’t all that fazed to be the bearer of bad news. It’s life, people go on.
Haugerud’s second entry in his Sex/Love/Dreams trilogy juxtaposes Marianne’s aloofness with the personability of her nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen). If the doctor is pragmatic, the nurse is heartfelt, following patients out of the office to ensure their emotional well-being as well as their physical. This is why it comes as a surprise to Marianne to find out Tor is going back and forth from Oslo on the ferry in the hopes of meeting the men he spots on Grindr. From the app, the nurse moves things out to the deck, where the urgency of a short commute makes things all the more exciting.
And therein lies the central conversation of Love, a film eager to explore the modern metamorphosis of human relationships as ties once so constricted by the rigid rules of institutions become much more fluid. Hovig plays Marianne with muted inquisitiveness, attentively listening to her greener co-worker as she feels her own notions of what is acceptable and what isn’t begin to shift. In turn, Jacobsen encapsulates the easygoing charm of the beautiful and young, but with an undercurrent of yearning that makes for a surprisingly touching performance. A handful of secondary characters come in and out to support the story’s central throughline, from a recently divorced geologist eager to find love again to an ageing man whose cancer diagnosis has him reliving the pain that comes from facing a life denied of pleasure.
Although there is a welcome palpability in these characters and their plights, there is also a certain sense of aimlessness as Haugerud hammers in on issues of sexual freedom and sexism to get his capital P point across. This insistence also presents an odd dichotomy, as Love feels at once lengthy and rushed, with interesting metaphors on the geography of the land and that of the body introduced early on and then left unexplored, set aside in favour of overstretched – and, at times, overexposed – dialogue.
It feels a shame, too, that a film about love but, crucially, also about sex plays out so tamely. The bodies on screen, so greatly scrutinised through words, are spared any interesting visual scrutiny, with Haugerud and cinematographer Cecilie Semec framing the characters through an oddly chaste lens. Even the sex itself, present yet scarce, feels void of any sliver of passion, a merely practical interlude where limbs interlock but never truly connect—almost as sterile as Marianne’s consulting room. Sadly, without insight into the intimacy of communion, many of the conversations Haugerud brings to the fore end up laying a bit too close to the didactic.
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