Elskling

Because I try to choose well what I see, I can almost always find some food for thought in a movie or I can get emotional.

But rarely do I cry at the cinema simply out of compassion. This is what happened when I was watching Elskling, a film from Norway about low self-esteem, where it comes from and how it can damage a person's life and relationships.

The plot is very simple: two people meet, fall in love, get married, have children, face some problems and then have to deal with them. However, this same plot is shown in various depths. As the film progresses, layer after layer we get closer and closer to the core of the problem: we see what lies underneath and then what's underneath this new deeper layer. As a result, together with the main character we face the truth. We feel. We learn. And we are ready for the clean slate.

Bravo!

What a truly magnificent film! Fantastically written story and cinematography that drags you through an emotional rollercoaster, going left and right. Director Lilja has created a masterpiece with this. I'm so glad this film got to see the light of day. Perhaps the struggle of getting it made and realized is some of the frustration and intensity we can absorb through the film.

The acting from Helga is nothing but pristine! Never seen such a great performance from any Norwegian actor or perhaps even others. The film has scenes that will keep you pulling your hair, not sure who's side you're on, keeping you on the edge of your seats. While at the same time it WILL make you cry when you finally get there. Is the mirror scene perhaps one of the best shots and scenes in Nordic cinematography history? See it and judge for your self!

If this is what getting angry means in Norway they must be the calmest people on earth. This would count as a friendly argument where I'm from.

Not what I expected and not what the synopsis tells you.

It's about this woman's journey towards herself and her self-realization about the patterns she keeps repeating to sabotage herself.

But I don't think it translated that well, also the subtitles were bad.

Maybe it was too subtle for me, although I did get the gist. I also suspect the cultural differences played a part. Or something like that. It just didn't hit me as much as I expected it to or as much as I had hoped.

I have rarely seen a more obvious Oscar candidate for "Best Picture". It goes straight to the heart, almost attacking the souls of anyone who has experienced a, let's say, normal romantic relationship that lasted beyond the honeymoon phase and ended in a breakup.

You could hear a pin drop in the theater from start to finish. Especially in the second half, it was intense-a psychological shaking that pulls and tugs at the audience, yet restrained and understated, which made the impact even more powerful.

Director Lilja Ingolfsdottir, who also wrote the screenplay and designed the costumes, has created the best film of the year. She has brought on Norwegian actors, relatively unknown, to deliver performances of absolute world-class caliber.

For anyone out there who had/has a family member suffering from mental health issues, or he/she him/herself struggling with such malaise, this film certainly hits home. And it hits hard.

The "familiarity" with which it brought me all these thoughts of my mother - taking care of 4 kids, being 'entrapped' - and how I got affected by her raising me, incapable of being in touch with my emotions and having any connection, to anyone...

I cried. I cried hard, throughout this movie, for the similarities with my own life, my mother's, and my own human experience, are simply hard to ignore...

I wish by now this is less of a taboo - talking about mental state and having difficulty to cope with life in general. I left the theater a bit disoriented, wishing I could talk to someone about what I had just experienced, but failing to think of anyone I could call up...

Loneliness...

Guess this says it all. It resonated and touched me because of strictly personal reasons, but I wish everyone had the open mind and heart to watch this movie and take lessons from it - we're all different, some of us have more difficulty being in touch with their emotions, and pushing people away is not done in self-defense, it's done out of fear.