Here is the first instalment of the stimulating Oslo movie trilogy about modern relationships from Norwegian novelist and film-maker Dag Johan Haugerud: this one is Sex, followed by Love and Dreams. It is marginally my least favourite of the three, being slightly more didactic and less humorous than its companions – but still very lively and full of ideas.
Two guys work for a chimney sweeping business, and unlike Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, there’s no smudge-faced larking about with brushes. But the job still appears to involve a certain amount of perching on rooftops; perhaps Haugerud has chosen this so that he can get plenty of reflective high-up views of the city, rooted in dramatic reality, and which aren’t just hackneyed drone shots. They are close friends, and in an idle moment of chat, one of them (Jan Gunnar Røise) confesses to the other (Thorbjørn Harr) that recently, out of sheer curiosity, he had sex with another man. He does not consider himself gay but the experience was pleasurable. His fellow sweep, a committed Christian and heterosexual family man, has also had a self-questioning experience: a recurring dream in which a beautiful being, like David Bowie, responds to the female side of him.
