One night in Oslo (Eirik Svensson, 2014): Norway

Reviewed by Erik Johansson at Metro 4. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

The Day of Liberation occurs the 17th of May every year in Norway. It’s a day that has gone from celebrating the day Norway became independent to celebrating summer and freedom with different kinds of events together with one of scandinavia’s best friends when it comes to partying: Alcohol. It’s also famous for being the day when people get flirty, emotional and spread a lot of love. Turning the date back 9 months and looking at the Norwegian birth dates, this day also seems to be a day of children mass production.

One of Eirik Svenssons goals was to express the feeling of the group of boys having a very strong friendship that goes back to their childhood. To achieve this he had a couple techniques that he used for his benefit. During the selection process he tried and managed to chose actors who where friends in real life and who could already cope together with a comfort that he later could keep working on. He also decided not to use a fixed script for the movie but to rather tell the actors what he wanted to get out of the scene and let them use their own vocabulary. He mentioned his open attitude towards the actors and the positive surprises they sometimes brought him. This while he also had to challenge not to get confused in what he was looking for. I think he did a very good job and managed to deliver something that felt genuine to the spectators.

The story kicks of with a drama between the two 14-15 year old best friends Sam, Amir and Amirs ex girlfriend Thea. It’s a dilemma that creates conflict between the two boys and it doesn’t look bright for their future as Amir feels a lot of betrayal while Sam has powerful emotions towards Thea. The movie highlights the challenges in a strong friendship that is genuine and also the beauty of forgiveness. Which I would state as the theme of the movie.

The scenes created by cinematographer Karl Erik Brondbo gave me as a Swede a very true impression of how it is to be a 14-15 year old on your summer vacation. All the way from making all the preparations, which sometimes means you have the law against you, to talking about the girls who are going to be at the party and so on. He included all the details such as the challenge to get the alcohol, to the shy relationships between the girls and the boys where he chose to shoot the girls and the boys separately as they prepared themselves to give that impression. He also captured the happiness and excitement in the characters which I rather was felt than seen. He also uses symbolic footage such as when Amir fights with one of the hockey players on his playstation as he has been betrayed by his best friend and is about to “fight” for what he wants.

The environment is the city of Oslo. You get to see the low class apartment buildings where the two head characters Sam and Amir lives as well as the middle/high class neighborhoods where the party is at. It’s all filmed during the typical sunny summer days or cosy summer nights that every single scandinavian can relate too. However, if you’re not a scandinavian, I think this movie can be harder to understand. The reason being that I felt that it was the small scandinavian internal details that made me nostalgic and therefore found the beauty in this movie.