Asta’s life in a port town on the west coast of Norway has ground to a halt after a trauma that, like everything in this enigmatic Norwegian-language film, is hinted at rather than overtly explored. A soulful, slow-cinema meditation on a moment of transition for a young female journalist (played by Amalie Ibsen Jensen), A Human Position seems, at first glance, to be a resolutely uneventful piece of film-making. But with its gentle rhythms and understated clues to an engulfing sadness from which Asta is only just emerging, this elegantly restrained drama is astutely observed and, in its quiet way, emotionally profound.
A Human Position is on Mubi from 30 January
