Thelma (15)
Directed by Joachim Trier
Starring Eili Harboe, Okay Kaya, Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Ludvig Algeback, Isabel Christine Andreasen. Subtitled. 116 mins.
Norwegians are supposedly the happiest people in the world but I'd say they were no better than they ought to be. Probably the major reason for their contentment, other than being filthy rich, is that they export all their doom and gloom, ship it all out to the rest of us in beautifully packaged cultural artefacts. I bet they don't spend the long winter evenings lighting cigars with burning 100 Krone notes while watching scandi-noir, or films like Thelma.
Trier's film is a rejigging of the Carrie story. Thelma (Harboe) is the daughter of strict religious parents who has strange, inexplicable powers: when she is around birds have a tendency to fly into windows. When she moves away from home to start university she finds herself attracted to another female student Anja (Kaya) and begins to experience epileptic fits as her powers start to spiral out of her control.
Trier delivers his tale with enormous restraint. Everybody is quietly spoken, and melodrama is avoided. Everything is staged immaculately. There is a marvellous God's eye view scene at the beginning where the camera looks down on a square from far above and slowly beginning to move down towards it as we wait to see which of the figures moving below it will focus our attention on.
In the first hour, the film is incredibly engaging and tense. Trier comes up with startling and unsettling set pieces, images that you will not quickly forget. What he doesn't come up with though is anything in the way of an explanation or purpose. Ambiguity is great but the nature of Thelma's supernatural abilities is so specious and random that they begin to look like contrivances.
Directed by Joachim Trier
Starring Eili Harboe, Okay Kaya, Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Ludvig Algeback, Isabel Christine Andreasen. Subtitled. 116 mins.
Norwegians are supposedly the happiest people in the world but I'd say they were no better than they ought to be. Probably the major reason for their contentment, other than being filthy rich, is that they export all their doom and gloom, ship it all out to the rest of us in beautifully packaged cultural artefacts. I bet they don't spend the long winter evenings lighting cigars with burning 100 Krone notes while watching scandi-noir, or films like Thelma.
Trier's film is a rejigging of the Carrie story. Thelma (Harboe) is the daughter of strict religious parents who has strange, inexplicable powers: when she is around birds have a tendency to fly into windows. When she moves away from home to start university she finds herself attracted to another female student Anja (Kaya) and begins to experience epileptic fits as her powers start to spiral out of her control.
Trier delivers his tale with enormous restraint. Everybody is quietly spoken, and melodrama is avoided. Everything is staged immaculately. There is a marvellous God's eye view scene at the beginning where the camera looks down on a square from far above and slowly beginning to move down towards it as we wait to see which of the figures moving below it will focus our attention on.
In the first hour, the film is incredibly engaging and tense. Trier comes up with startling and unsettling set pieces, images that you will not quickly forget. What he doesn't come up with though is anything in the way of an explanation or purpose. Ambiguity is great but the nature of Thelma's supernatural abilities is so specious and random that they begin to look like contrivances.
