Critics reviews

Bountiful in talk—confessions, flirtations, observations, recriminations—Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s captivating Love examines the erotics of conversation: talking as turn-on, listening as lubricant.

Haugerud’s protagonists aren’t righteous, but rather inquisitive and also hyper-aware of how time passes, whether or not we’re ready to move on from one project, or one happiness, or one life to the next.

In their pitch at saying something about what’s new, if anything, about our relationships to these universal concepts [the titular love, sex, dreams], there is an ingratiating and welcoming atmosphere. In contrast to melodrama, this lower temperature might be seen as a virtue: here is a filmmaker who isn’t attempting to catch his audience off-guard, and who wants to propose a happy compromise of these topics, rather than their usual, uncomfortable failures.

In some ways “Love” feels highly theoretical, each character demonstrating a different approach to finding sexual connection and romantic fulfillment... Haugerud’s script is more or less free of judgment. If it veers a bit academic at times (how convenient that every character has a different perspective to share), it’s so beautiful that you want to just keep dwelling in its world.

The insistent warmth of Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love, one third of his Oslo Stories trilogy, can be off-putting at first... But once one surrenders to the gentle rhythms of Jense Christian Fodstad’s editing, to the frankness with which Haugerud’s characters approach life and which he approaches the material, the film is utterly enrapturing.

Honest, thoughtful, and daringly talky as it observes modern dating customs in the age of apps... The second part of a thematically but not narratively linked trilogy... it’s sure to find traction...

Love feels at once lengthy and rushed, with interesting metaphors on the geography of the land and that of the body introduced early on and then left unexplored, set aside in favour of overstretched – and, at times, overexposed – dialogue.

Dag Johan Haugerud’s new film “Love” feels, in its quiet, conversational way, rather radical: a tender, gently observed relationship study that places as much stock in casual sex as in seeking a soulmate.

Satisfying, thoughtful narrative and character play, together with engagingly candid performances from the ensemble headed by Andrea Braien Hovig will make this LGBTQIA+-themed number a promising prospect for admirers of mature, thoughtful relationship cinema – especially in the range that spans from Eric Rohmer to The Worst Person in the World.

Although Love is low on drama or even plot, Haugerud keeps the film appealing precisely because he gives the interactions between the players room to breathe, in part also because of his subtle but effective direction.

Dag Johan Haugerud’s discursive film is a companion piece to his earlier Sex. Once again, his protagonists are middle-class professionals groping for a way to live that sits well with them, which became tiresomely self-indulgent in Sex. Love, funnily enough, is much more lively, a better mix between conversations, revelations of character and wider views of the city and the sea that imply that Haugerud’s interest is much broader than just the doings of his cast of character

This wish to rewrite the dating script and yet not break with hetero-normative standards is what makes and breaks this film. Love strives to be bold, and Haugerud may well dip his toe into the water, but he never charts new territory. Any boundary pushing is quickly subdued by the notion that one thrives best in a traditional relationship.