Brave New Love

Forbidden love takes on a strange new form in writer-director Maria Bäck’s probing domestic drama. Brave New Love follows sexually frustrated hypnotherapist Kate (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen) as she embarks on an affair that exacerbates, rather than satiates, her lust.

The film opens with a nude meet-cute. Kate takes artistic photos of herself in the wilderness following a camping trip, wearing nothing more than a bundle of sticks. She locks eyes with fellow hiker Andreas (Anders Danielsen Lie), as he bathes in the woods, though she’s quickly thrust from his gaze once her unwitting husband, Orla (Simon Sears), appears. It marks the start of a three-year-long affair that doesn’t actually entail any intercourse.

Unlike other infidelity dramas, Kate isn’t married to an uncaring or abusive partner. Her husband is loving and attentive, and the two equally divide parenting duties over their teenage daughter. And yet, she is unfulfilled, lusting after Andreas from the moment she meets him and engaging in compulsive masturbation. It’s one of the most nuanced depictions of female sexual frustration in recent memory, all portrayed with subtle rawness by Johansen.

The film is darkly deadpan in that quintessentially Nordic way, with some of the awkward exchanges resembling Roy Andersson’s works. Kate attends weekly “shame circle” meetings with other women in a church, each offering their own quirkily graphic take on her odd love triangle.

Its strength lies in its multifaceted depiction of infidelity and human morality. Kate flits between guilt and making excuses for her behaviour, emphasising to her shame group that she and Andreas barely kissed, let alone had penetrative sex. The group itself serves as a feminine domain in which she can test the boundaries of her desires with her peers. She asserts that she doesn’t want to leave her husband; she “want(s) both of them”.

As the story progresses, Kate’s breakdown comes with the disintegration of the naturalistic spark that made the first half work so well. Her lust manifests into something more symbolic, which belies the film’s initial emphasis on unfulfilled female sexuality. But Johansen’s performance remains excellent, award-worthy, even.

Brave New Love admirably tackles the thorny complexities of marital devotion. In doing so, it encourages viewers to probe the notion of monogamy as the norm.

Antonia Georgiou

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