K is a danish photographer, she is married and has a daughter. While working in Paris she sees a man and follows him. He catches her and she explains that she has a recurring dream about him where he commits suicide in a hotel. They begin an affair. When she is sent to work in Poland she tracks him down even though this time around she took her family with her on the trip. He's a Polish professor, married and with a daughter. Then he follows her to her hotel. He gives her a key to an apartment right across where he lives. Eventually her husbands catches on to things and they break up. Meanwhile she installs herself in the apartment and spends her time watching him and following him to work. Eventually he gets tired of her and tries to break things up but she won't accept, until he shows her that the uses the apartment for all of his affairs.
This movie is stylish and well directed. The script lacks though. The two lovers don't share anything but sex really, they don't talk much and know little about each other. Now this could very well be how affairs are for Scandinavian women--in the end credits the writer/director thanks all the women who have shared their stories with him--but it doesn't make for a compelling movie. One doesn't even see the need for an affair, at least for her. She seems most happy when she is working. We don't even see her smile during the affair. One thinks that the whole dream issue will somehow contribute to the story, but it doesn't overtly. The most important line is uttered by the Polish man when he tells her that he isn't the man of her dreams. No one is the person of someone else's dreams. In dreams, or rather day-dreams and fantasies, we idealize people and then expect the other person to conform to that ideal--which never happens. I think in a way that's what the movie is trying to tell us with the dream sub-story.
While not perfect, this movie is a must see for cheaters and would-be cheaters. For the rest of us, there isn't much here but a sense of emptiness that isn't even filled by the movie's style.
