Eskil Vogt is the Norwegian screenwriter who has worked with Joachim Trier, and now makes his feature directing debut with this intense movie about a beautiful blonde woman who has just gone blind. It is impeccably composed, though Vogt will insist on finding a quaint keynote of Milan Kundera-style sexuality. Ellen Dorrit Petersen plays Ingrid, marooned in her apartment all day as she comes to terms with her condition; she withdraws into a fantasy world, suspecting that her architect husband is silently sneaking back into the flat to spy on her: weirdly, it almost begins to resemble the Broadway thriller Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn, about a blind woman being menaced in her flat. Ingrid takes to writing quasi-autobiographical fiction on her laptop with audio-assist software; she projects her own loneliness, sexual frustration and feelings about childlessness on to her characters. Vogt duly dramatises the novel’s scenes, with details surreally withdrawn or changed midstream as Ingrid changes her mind: a self-conscious and artificial trope, although one which creates great opportunities for black comedy. The film is at its best with Ingrid just alone, in her flat, with nothing happening. At these moments, the film shows an interest in what living with blindness might actually be like.
