Like the Fast and Furious series, this is a movie about family. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, though, because in this Norwegian[1] movie, we see multiple generations of a family living in a single house, and all being fucked-up and sad in various ways over the years.

Mostly, though, the movie focuses on a woman and her dad. Her parents divorced when she was young, and so her relationship with him is strained. But he’s a famous film director and she’s a moderately successful stage actress, and he writes a movie for her to star in. Should she do it? Will she?

Well, that’s what much of the movie is about — though not entirely; it also explores the other relationships in these characters’ lives, as well as their family history, their careers, and really just a whole set of spiraling concerns that are nevertheless all centered on this father/daughter relationship and what it means to both of them.

This doesn’t sound like anything special, but in fact it’s legit excellent. It’s not just that it’s really well-acted, though it is; it’s that it ends up bringing in a lot of very specific detail that keeps it from being a Generic Artsy Family Movie. I’d heard good things about Joachim Trier, but had never gotten around to watching one of his movies until now; turns out the people who were saying good things were extremely right, and his other movies are on my watchlist now.

  1. Although fun fact, the dad is played by a Skarsgård, and you might think “wait, isn’t he Swedish? Did he learn Norwegian just for this movie?” And the answer is no, he apparently just talks in Swedish. (I didn’t notice this while watching; I had to look for the answer.) There’s some backstory for his character, about how his parents took him to live in Sweden when he was a little kid and so he speaks that language; but apparently Norwegians and Swedes just speak their own language at each other and expect to be understood? Which makes them sound not entirely like separate languages to me? ↩︎