“Here’s a rom-com for those who don’t like them“
“The other main feature is the acting of Renate Reinsve. She is brilliant and an unsurprising winner of Best Actress at Cannes.”
“This is how rom-coms should be: you can be funny without stereotyping and slapstick. Be real. Relationships are comical enough.“
Con Nats
3.5 /5 Unbroken hearts
The odd title and the cheeky smile of the attractive actor in the poster makes you think you’re in for an uproarious comedy. While this Norwegian film has many comic touches, it’s more human than that. In fact, here’s a rom-com for those who don’t like them.
Julie (Renate Reinsve) is a very likeable lass. She was an intelligent student who changed from medicine to psychology to photography to shop assistant. And she seemed to change her men just as frequently.
At reaching age 30, she’s experiencing her first stable relationship with an older man, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie). He’s a famous graphic pulp fiction artist, so he’s intelligent and cool. This is all covered in the prologue.
You know this, as the film is neatly broken up into 12 chapters with a prologue and epilogue. The structure takes us through the stages of a relationship: his friends; your family; new beginnings; questioning; temptation; break ups and new beginnings etc etc. It’s part of its cheeky charm. If you’re over 40, you’ll know the drum.
Julie is stifled even in his unorthodox world, and about to reach her first mid-life crisis – turning 30 – and babies seem to be everyone’s topic of conversation. (She should move to Sydney where all we talk about is property.)
There is a scene where Julie celebrates her birthday with her mother and grandmother, where she quickly reflects on where they and their predecessors where at when they turned 30. Whether they were divorced, widowed, single or married, the more she went back, the more children they had. While Julie worries about how unproductive her life is, the film points out how far women have come.
And this is the essence of this story. It might be an anti-romantic rom-com, but it celebrates Julie’s independence and ability to buck an age old trend. She’s the heartbreaker, unfocused, unfaithful and the supposed ’worst person in the world’ even though the term is attributed to Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), a later flame.
The other main feature is the acting of Renate Reinsve. She is brilliant and an unsurprising winner of Best Actress at Cannes. She plays Julie so empathetically it’s hard not to be won over, no matter how terrible her actions might be. The male characters are treated sympathetically, and some of the scenes between Reinsve and Danielsen Lie in the third act are the best and most moving. This is how rom-coms should be: you can be funny without stereotyping and slapstick. Be real. Relationships are comical enough.
Joachim Trier’s direction is very good, and could have gone further. His direction in one chapter where the whole world is standing still was very clever. I wish he went further, more often.
Inevitably, these coming of age stories will resonate more with Gen Y and Z who are still unsure of what’s to come. (Maybe if they listened to Gen X more they’d understand why being disillusioned is the new normal.) There aren’t any unexpected twists or crazy curve balls. It’s a very warm, funny and female coming of age story and a romantic comedy for those who are over them.
Con Nats, On The Screen
