This harrowing retelling of Norwegian rightwing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s 2011 terrorist attack on the island of Utøya is less exploitative than Paul Greengrass’s brutal, Netflix-bound, English-language version, but the question remains: does a tragedy have to be turned into cinema for people to engage with it?
I’m not convinced either film offers much in the way of catharsis or reflection, though at least this one is formally interesting, playing out in “real time” and as one continuous take. It’s an effective technique that ramps up the tension as wholesome, wannabe MP Kaja (Andrea Berntzen, reminiscent of a young Jennifer Lawrence) searches for her younger sister. The characters in the film are fictionalised but based on the accounts of real survivors; fine to protect their identities, but dubious to deliberately twist the narrative to create additional sympathy. A scene that sees Kaja softly singing Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors, for example, is played for maximum pathos, as if the killing of 77 people, mainly teenagers, isn’t tragedy enough.
