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‘Love’ Review: Thoughtful, Grownup Norwegian Romantic Drama Accounts for Different Emotional Needs


A straight female urologist and a gay male nurse resist romantic conventions in 'Love,' part two of Dag Johan Haugerud's intimacy-themed trilogy.

Screen romance, however, remains largely behind this curve, which is why Dag Johan Haugerud ’s new film “Love” feels, in its quiet, conversational way, rather radical: a tender, gently observed relationship study that places as much stock in casual sex as in seeking a soulmate. After a blind date with amiable, recently divorced geologist Ole (Thomas Gullestad), a friend of her own best pal Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), Marianne bumps into Tor by chance on the ferry home — and is intrigued to learn that the boat is his favoured place for picking up guys. A subplot involving increasingly neurotic plans by municipal worker Heidi — hilariously played by Engebrightsen as an outright pill in hippyish disguise — for a sex-positive celebration of the city subtly pokes fun at the occasional hypocrisies of effortfully progressive social politics, without getting reactionary about it.

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