Dag Johan Haugerud’s relationship trilogy has drawn the attention of top festivals since the first installment, Sex, bowed in the Berlinale’s Panorama section in February 2024.
Then, seven months later, the topic switched to Love, unveiled in competition at Venice. Now, after its domestic premiere in Norway, Dreams (Drømmer), not to be confused with Michel Franco’s film of the same name, hence the addition of the other two titles between parentheses for festival screening purposes), completes the cycle as part of the Berlin competition, winning the festival’s highest honor, the Golden Bear.
The award sets a promising stage for the film’s imminent international rollout in theaters, and multiple territories already plan to release the three films close together on a monthly basis or thereabouts.
For this trilogy capper, which was originally intended to be the second installment (in as much as it matters, given the lack of plot connections between the three movies), writer/director Haugerud changes his approach a tiny bit. Whereas the previous two films dealt with adult relationships, Dreams goes all in on the subject of the first crush, as experienced through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old girl. That girl is Johanne, played by emerging talent Ella Øverbye who, like most of the main cast, reunites with the director after previously appearing in his 2019 film Beware of Children.
Her life changes when she meets her new teacher Johanna (Selome Emnetu), with whom she initially bonds over their similar first names. Their mutual respect becomes friendship, and eventually Johanne finds herself head-over-heels in love with Johanna. Nothing inappropriate ever comes out of this, but her writings about the matter become a source of tension and self-reflection within the family, as her mother (Ane Dahl Torp) and grandmother begin remembering their own unfulfilled dreams. And there is legitimate doubt about the content of Johanne’s self-described fictionalization of the topic, especially when the thought of publication rears its head.
Whereas Sex was primarily about attraction, and Love dealt with the intricacies of relationships (and works better as the climax of a triptych where the city of Oslo itself is also a major character), Dreams falls ideally in between the two, capturing the nuances of desire and whether to act on it or not, with the crush also serving as the catalyst for Johanne’s emotional and artistic maturation. It’s (deliberately) awkward, in a very endearing way, with Øverbye’s performance conveying all the layers of adolescent sexual awakening while keeping the overall mood quite chaste, with the breeziness of summertime that Eric Rohmer injected into a Céline Sciamma-like character study.
The lead performance is also key to the film succeeding in a major area that sets it apart from its two companion pieces: the extensive use of voiceover, granting us access to Johanne’s feelings in literary form. Literate without being overwritten, it’s a new facet of Haugerud’s creative personality, and the way he directed the young actress to deliver those crucial lines makes the whole exercise a vital extension of the protagonist’s personality and not an intrusive intertextual gimmick. It’s just as much an exploration of her awkwardness as the physical work is, while also showing the genuine talent the girl exhibits in what could end up being a viable profession in the arts.
As such, while this is technically the second installment in the sequence, it is perhaps the ideal entry point for a (slightly) younger audience, the budding cinephiles approaching what remains a very arthouse-oriented overall project, despite its fairly accessible nature. Once they’ve entered Haugerud’s world through Johanne’s dreams, it will be easier to transition into the sex and love afterwards, yet again with two out of three titles fading away after all of them appear simultaneously in the opening credits of each film. For while they may function as their own units, and they very much do, it’s also interesting to view them as a (Nordically) romantic whole.
Director, screenwriter: Dag Johan Haugerud
Cast: Ella Øverbye, Selome Emnetu, Ane Dahl Torp, Anne Marit Jacobsen
Producers: Yngve Sæther, Hege Hauff Hvattum
Cinematography: Cecilie Semec
Production design: Tuva Hølmebakk
Costume design: Ida Toft
Music: Anna Berg
Sound: Yvonne Stenberg, Gisle Tveito
Production companies: Motlys
World sales: m-appeal
Venue: Berlinale (Competition)
In Norwegian
110 minutes
