Stellan Skarsgård co-stars in a strong Scandinavian
drama about love and illness
Dir/scr: Maria Sødahl. Norway. 2019.
126mins.
Anja (Andrea BrÓ•in
Hovig) has survived three children, a slowly stultifying marriage and a
tumultuous career in the arts. But then a Christmas Eve doctor´s appointment
reveals something she probably will not survive: a reoccurrence of the cancer
she thought she had beaten back, and a new, malignant brain tumour. Incurable,
the physician calmly explains.
That scene unfolds within the first few
minutes of the film Hope,
and you´d be forgiven if you read the title as bitterly ironic. But Anja and
her family face the uncertainty that lies ahead filled more with sad resilience
than despair.
Although this carefully made, subtitled
drama is unlikely to find mainstream success after its Toronto premiere, it
should discover a satisfied audience among older arthouse patrons and loyal
fans of co-star Stellan Skarsgård.
The film is very much the story of
Anja´s journey, though, over one extraordinarily dramatic holiday week. Much of
her immediate struggle is simply finding answers to her medical questions, with
much of what she´s hearing blithely contradictory. One surgeon holds out a slim
chance, talking about a complicated procedure that has had some success;
another basically advises her to get her affairs in order and go home to die.
Red tape and officiousness abounds. (What isn´t present, and is sure to shock
American audiences, is any discussion of money; at no time does Anja have to
worry about the cost of treatment.)
But while Anja is navigating the twists
and turns of modern health care, there´s another journey she has to take -
finding a resolution to her relationship with her partner, Tomas (Skarsgård).
They´ve lived together for years, with Anja not only having three children with
him but assuming the maternal care of three older step-kids. Yet they never
married, for reasons Anja can´t quite explain, and in recent years they´ve
grown distant, two people who share a lovely apartment and similar careers in
the arts, but little else. Will this sudden crisis bring them together? And if
took an incurable illness to do it, is that even a connection worth having?
Hope, meanwhile,
provides its own union, a warm gathering of Scandinavian artists, with Sweden´s
Skarsgård and Norway´s Hovig both excelling under Norwegian director Maria
Sødah´s attentive care. Their swings of emotion - from surly silences to
tender handholding to frantic, almost hostile lovemaking - are all painfully
real and carefully captured. A late-in-the-drama scene, in which they simply
look each other in the eye, reveals more about their feelings than any
overwrought dialogue ever could.
But then Sødahl, who first gained
attention with 2010´s Limbo,
is an artist of quiet, disciplined observance. Like the first, striking films
of Danish cinema´s Dogme 95 movement, her film uses no music. There are no
elaborate sets, or particularly showy edits or camerawork. Instead, Sødahl
observes as gender and birth-order dynamics play out, with Anja´s small sons
suddenly needy and attentive, her teenage daughter still struggling with
confusion and rebellion. As physicians hide behind a clinical, but emotionally
necessary, distance and bureaucrats stick stubbornly to questions of policy. As
handwringing friends wonder what to do at all. And as a woman, given perhaps
three more months to live, wonders what kind of life she´s been living.
Production companies:
Motlys
Worldwide distribution: TrustNordisk
info@trustnordisk.com
Producer: Thomas Robsahm
Production design: Jørgen Stangebye
Larsen
Editing: Christian Siebenherz
Cinematography: Manuel Alberto Claro
Main
cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Andrea BrÓ•in Hovig, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osbourne,
Eirik Hallert