I haven’t seen the previous two films in Dag Johan Haugerud‘s trilogy, so I can’t comment on how ‘Dreams‘ (or ‘Drømmer‘ in the original version) fits in and completes the Norwegian screenwriter and director’s group of films. The Berlin festival jury considered it worthy enough to award it the Golden Bear this year. I respect their choice, although I have quite a few question marks about this film – a coming-of-age drama about a teenage girl in contemporary Oslo that addresses issues related to the search for identity and confronting first love in adolescence, and how feelings can be transformed into words and words into literature. Dag Johan Haugerud has chosen an original form of expression, in which words seem to have the same weight as images. The result, for me, was not very convincing.
The main heroine of the film is called Johanne. She is a teenager, a high school student raised by a single mother and a grandmother who is a writer. The character and the family seem typical of the Norwegian middle class and even the growing up crisis that the girl goes through is quite common. Under the influence of a book she read and of her age, Johanne falls in love with Johanna, her French teacher – a sincere love, which for her takes on the proportions of a cosmic drama. The bond that develops between the two women, teacher and student, is ambiguous. Is it about a teenager looking for affection and support and a teacher who gives her professional, moral and feminine support? Or about a forbidden bond between a mature woman and a minor teenager? Johanne keeps a diary in which the expression of feelings mixes reality and fantasy. Is this diary a possible evidence of crimes or the expression of an inherited literary talent, which may even turn into the debut book of a future writer?
The story written and brought to the screen by Dag Johan Haugerud manages to sensitively describe the teenage girl’s universe, the anxieties of the mother who fears losing touch with her daughter, the feelings of the grandmother who identifies her granddaughter’s talent while struggling with her own demons, leftovers of the passage of time. The main heroine is played by Ella Øverbye, the mother is Ane Dahl Torp, the grandmother is Ane Dahl Torp. They all act excellently. The dialogs between the three heroines precisely and often humorously trace the relationships in a family of women with distinct personalities, trying to help each other, but hindered as if by a set of social conventions that are not always visible. I found the character of the teacher played by Selome Emnetu to be somewhat less well-defined. The explanation in the conversation with the teenager’s mother at the end of the film, which somehow turns the situation around and contradicts the previous perception of the character, did not seem to align well with what I had seen until then. The main problem in ‘Dreams‘, however, was for me the excessive verbosity. It can be argued that this has a double justification in the fact that Johanne, the heroine of the film, reads from her own diary and that this diary written with talent can become a book. Some of the viewers and critics were enthusiastic about this permanent interplay between image and text. To me, the fact that about 80% of the film’s duration is accompanied by off-screen voice seemed excessive. But this is, of course, only my personal impression. I recommend watching and forming your own opinion.