Dreams (Sєx Love)

is somewhat tricky to pin down with description alone. It’s part of a thematic trilogy by Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud, along with Sєx and Love, each of which premiered at European festivals over the past year – Dreams played Berlin this February and walked away with the Golden Bear, the festival’s top prize. All three films are, to some extent, meditations on all three topics, hence the English stylization of this movie’s тιтle being Dreams (Sєx Love).

Of the others, I have seen only Love, and already with this point of comparison, I see Haugerud’s method as one of gentle collisions. The two films are filled with different, sometimes contrasting elements – characteristics, viewpoints, idenтιтies, beliefs – that the director brushes up against one another, hoping they create sparks. Love, for me, was unable to set its stimulating ideas alight; in Dreams, they ignite and reignite constantly.

What is, at its core, the story of a teen girl’s romantic and Sєxual awakening becomes as expansive and multifaceted as real life can be. The movie manages to be about everything it hopes to explore without doing any of its themes a disservice. Despite its light touch, it had me cycling through a variety of thoughts and feelings, to the extent that I struggle to pick one that defines the viewing experience. The best single word I can find is “activating.”

Dreams Has A Deceptive Level Of Narrative Intrigue

Its Story & Style Wrinkles Unfurl Gradually

At first glance, Dreams seems to be centered around 17-year-old Johanne’s (Ella Øverbye) realization that she has fallen in love with Johanna (Selome Emnetu), her high school French teacher. We experience this alongside her as Johanne talks us through the nuances of her feelings in voiceover. The camera aligned with her warm gaze, managing to be flattering and desirous without ever becoming leery. Øverbye convincingly plays someone stumbling into a well of emotion deeper than they ever imagined, and eager to share every corner of it with us.

In reality, Dreams is actually about Johanne’s later decision to put this experience in writing, now that she considers it all over. She wanted to, she says, for herself; if her memories could be locked in physical form, reified in a thumb drive, then she could prevent them from dissipating. But it’s clear she carries some guilt over having hidden this from her family. She shows it first to her grandmother, Karin (Anne Marit Jacobsen), a published writer herself, who she felt would be the least likely to judge her. Karin then insists Johanne’s mother, Kristin (Ane Dahl Torp), be allowed to read it.

It is, we understand, a strikingly intimate memoir. Johanne does a lot of pining in Johanna’s classroom, never funnier than when she sees fellow students gift her a knitted scarf and becomes inconsolable at not having thought of it first, to the point of demanding her mother teach her to knit immediately. But she also finds out where Johanna’s apartment is and goes there more than once, telling Kristin an easily swallowed lie to cover each outing.

Haugerud doesn’t show us what happened there at first, starting instead with Karin and Kristin’s reactions to the completed story. It’s clear the memoir includes some evocatively described Sєx, and Kristin’s first instinct is to consider reporting the teacher and the school. But Karin, bowled over by the text’s literary accomplishment, notes that whether the Sєx is real or the narrating protagonist’s fantasy is ambiguous. What isn’t, and what they really have to contend with, is that their daughter and granddaughter is a fully realized subject, who experienced a destabilizing first love without them ever noticing.

Haugerud’s Creative Choices Are Often Dreams’ Greatest Strength

Each Stylistic Element Complements The Film’s Ideas

I won’t go further into what happened between Johanne and Johanna, because I think the narrative progression is one of the film’s pleasures, but Dreams isn’t about a morally provocative scandal. Haugerud is more interested in having us process our way through nuance and ambiguity, as his characters must. And the movie helps us along – as in Love, scenes are often structured as discussions that verge on dialectic. Characters are given distinct viewpoints on the movie’s themes to express, and as they volley their ideas, the film’s perspective on them grows richer.

One of Dreams‘ strengths is that its dramatic devices pair well with its interests. Through these dialogues, the movie becomes about these three women of different generations, and the challenges and rewards of trying to bridge those divides. Johanne’s monologues, while natural for recounting a subjective experience, are an interesting contrast, for her as well as us. Throughout the film, she has to grapple with how her story transforms when her mother and grandmother interpret it, often in ways that surprise her.

And once we realize Johanne’s voiceover is retrospective, there’s an element of narrative intrigue at play. Are we hearing her memoir? If so, are the movie’s flashbacks what actually happened, or her version of what happened, or pure invention? If this isn’t her memoir, what is the context of her narration? How is what we see different from what Kristin and Karin have read, and from a factual perspective, can either account really be trusted? How much does knowing what really happened actually matter?

Dreams juggles these questions wonderfully, along with many others and, in terms of creative choices worth thoughtful discussion, I’ve hardly scratched the surface. When Haugerud’s trilogy makes its way into US theaters, this entry certainly isn’t to be missed.