Love
Everybody is different, but everyone wants to be loved. Nowhere is this sentiment truer in Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love. The second instalment in a trilogy about modern relationships, which comes after Sex, Haugerud gives an honest and heartfelt examination of what looking for companionship looks like today as two friends who work at the same hospital explore their own romantic and sexual needs.
When on the way home from a party at a friend’s house, urologist Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) bumps into young nurse Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen) on the ferry. While she was set up to meet a divorced geologist (Thomas Gullestad), Tor explains that he rides the ferry to look for men on Grindr. After Marianne disembarks, Tor meets a psychologist named Bjorn (Lars Jacob Holm), and the pair hit things off, though Bjorn isn’t looking for anything sexual. Meanwhile, Marianne is left pondering whether she should continue getting to know the geologist despite not being all that interested or if she should seek more casual experiences herself.
There’s a profound honesty to every interaction within the film. Haugerud isn’t shy about bringing up various aspects about sex and relationships. People have different tastes, and what someone may find unappealing, another will find pleasurable. This is eloquently captured during Bjorn and Tor’s conversation on their first meeting and permeates through the rest of the script. After Marianne discovers that a man who she had a spontaneous fling with is married, for example, he insists that he loves his wife despite his morally questionable actions. He’s simply someone else who’s trying to fulfil their need for human connection.
Hovig and Jacobsen are superb in the central roles. Each actor brings a tangible sense of warmth and sense of humour to the topics at hand, which only makes their situations feel more relatable to viewers. When things do become more serious, the actors likewise deliver on the emotion, making the moments hit that much harder.
Although Haugerud’s latest film is a little too wordy and a bit too long at points, Love nevertheless delivers a poignant and tender reflection on dating in the digital age.
Andrew Murray
Read more reviews from our Venice Film Festival coverage here.
For further information about the event visit the Venice Film Festival website here.
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