Here is the first instalment of the stimulating Oslo movie trilogy about modern relationships from Norwegian novelist and film-maker Dag Johan Haugerud: this one is Sex, followed by Love and Dreams. It is marginally my least favourite of the three, being slightly more didactic and less humorous than its companions – but still very lively and full of ideas.
Two guys work for a chimney sweeping business, and unlike Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, there’s no smudge-faced larking about with brushes. But the job still appears to involve a certain amount of perching on rooftops; perhaps Haugerud has chosen this so that he can get plenty of reflective high-up views of the city, rooted in dramatic reality, and which aren’t just hackneyed drone shots. They are close friends, and in an idle moment of chat, one of them (Jan Gunnar Røise) confesses to the other (Thorbjørn Harr) that recently, out of sheer curiosity, he had sex with another man. He does not consider himself gay but the experience was pleasurable. His fellow sweep, a committed Christian and heterosexual family man, has also had a self-questioning experience: a recurring dream in which a beautiful being, like David Bowie, responds to the female side of him.
The problem now for Røise’s character is that, because he is so convinced that his adventure means nothing to his marriage, he recounts it at once to his wife; in his view, it isn’t even a confession, though his wife (Siri Forberg) is deeply upset. (Oddly, it is his male friend, and not his wife, who asks if they used a condom.) As for Harr’s character, he tells his wife about his dream and her take is that this gender-questioning experience is spiritual, because God and love go beyond gender.
Finally, this man is to take part in a drama-dance theatre show about Christianity wearing a slightly ridiculous red outfit that his son has run up for him on a sewing machine, which shows that he is not neglecting the non-traditional side of masculinity. There is an interesting final conversation between the two men in which Røise insists that sex with a man does not make him gay; Harr smiles indulgently but is clearly sceptical.
But then Røise says how moving it is that he can tell Harr about his sex-with-a-man experience, just as Harr can confide to him about being a Christian. Another type of movie would have reached for a comic effect here, with Harr perhaps nettled that his Christian beliefs are being considered equivalent to gay sex. This is, however, not what Haugerud intends: Sex is earnest, but cerebral and challenging.
• Oslo Stories Trilogy: Sex is in UK cinemas from 22 August.
