Iskyss is a rare bird of a film. The true spy-story about Norwegian Gunvor Galtung Haavik and her secret and illegal love of life, the Russian Vladimir Kozlov, is here treated from what you can call the love-angle.
This is a poetic story about two people falling in love, though prohibited, between a Norwegian embassy-worker and a Russian. During the WWII they met - she then as a nurse, he as a war-prisoner, badly hurt. Talking Russian, she applied, and got the job as an interpretor at the Norwegian embassy in Moscow. Here the Soviet KGB discovered her secret love, and pressured her to become a spy - if her beloved Vladimir was not to hurt. She was so in love with Vladimir, that she betrayed her own country.
In 1955 she was sent back to Oslo, then for a job in the Norwegian foreign office, and there she continued to deliver Norwegian State Secrets to the KGB for 22 years. On the 27of January 1977 she was frisked and arrested at a subway-station. In jail she became sick, and died 5th of August the same year, before her trial was up.
The film is based on documentation from the award-winning book by the same name, by the journalist Alf R. Jacobsen (The SKUP-price).
The film is seen through her own writing in her love-letters for Vladimir, and since there's still a lot of speculation if this is the reason for the whole tragedy, she's in the film given the name Vera Våge.
The film is slow-paced, and beautifully photographed. The tragedy is toned down, making this as much as a love story as possible. One sense the hard politic climate between Norway and Russia, during speaks and dinner meetings, but most of the harsh realities are kept away from the film.
The acting is sublime, but the films poetic and slow ways will not suite those waiting for any kind of action. This is poetic, mystically, sad, but still beautiful - for grown ups. It's also the films problem, since too many will be bored the use of love letters to tell a story about the worst spy Norway ever had. Ellen Dorrit Petersen learned Russian to do her role.
Director Knut Erik Jensen has been wise enough to make the film only 83 minutes long. This is sympathetic and shows that he understands his public. He has with Iskyss made a completely different movie. Very different from his highly successful and award-winning documentaries about northern Norwegian choirs and varieties.
