‘Dreams (Sex Love)’ Review: Dag Johan Haugerud’s Subtle Puzzle of Love and Memory
In contemporary Oslo, a 17-year-old girl falls in love with her French teacher and later writes a novel about their relationship. But as her family reads the manuscript, the question arises: did any of it really happen? Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, the film blurs the boundaries between love, memory, and fiction.
The matter is somewhat confusing, so let’s try to clear it up a bit. Norwegian cinema actually has two Oslo trilogies, each made by a different filmmaker. The first, known simply as The Oslo Trilogy (or Oslo-trilogien, to be precise), consists of three separate films by Joachim Trier —Reprise, Oslo, August 31st and The Worst Person in the World— released between 2006 and 2021.
The second, more recent one, is informally called The Oslo Stories Trilogy, directed by fellow Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud. It also includes three films —Love, Dreams and Sex— released between 2024 and 2025. What they share, of course, is that they’re all set in the Norwegian capital, and that their stories have little or nothing to do with one another, aside from a few recurring minor characters. In other words: you can easily watch them independently.
That brings us to Dreams —released in some countries as Dreams (Sex Love), either to connect it more clearly with the rest of the trilogy or simply to avoid confusion with Michel Franco’s film of the same name. To make matters more complicated, Dreams is the second part of Haugerud’s trilogy, yet it was the third to be released worldwide —and by far the most famous— after winning the Golden Bear at the most recent Berlinale. While the previous entries had attracted some festival attention (they screened at Berlin and Venice in 2024), it was Dreams that gave the trilogy wider visibility and a larger audience. And it is—just to clarify before continuing—the only one of the three I’ve seen, so I can’t really compare it to the others.
Although its Berlinale win was met with some coolness, Haugerud’s film (he’s no newcomer—he’s in his sixties and has a long career as a novelist and filmmaker) is a curious, formally daring exploration of the romantic awakening of a 17-year-old girl who falls hopelessly in love with her French teacher. What sets Dreams apart from other films with similar themes is hinted at in its title: it’s never quite clear whether the relationship between them actually happened, or whether it was imagined, dreamed, or invented by the young Johanne (Ella Øverbye).
The film unfolds as a first-person narrative whose origin we only discover near the end. Johanne explains that she has written a novel about her infatuation and affair with Johanna (yes, almost the same name), the new and radiant teacher at her school. Johanne describes her growing obsession, her jealousy when others seem closer to the teacher than she is, and her decision to take a risk —after all, a relationship between a teacher and a minor is ethically complex. She visits her teacher at home under a pretext, and then the film jumps forward several months, with Johanne telling us that the relationship is over.
That big ellipsis in the middle represents the novel Johanne has written about their affair. She gives it to her grandmother, Karin (Anne Marit Jacobsen), a well-known author, who loves it and encourages her to publish it. Johanne hesitates, unsure if she’s ready, but Karin, without asking, shares it with Johanne’s mother, Kristin (Ane Dahl Torp), who also becomes fascinated by it. Her mother, however, has more pragmatic concerns: is it real? If so, it could amount to abuse. Before any talk of publication, she insists, they should speak with Johanna, the teacher (Selome Emnetu), and hear her side of the story.
Yet Dreams isn’t really a romantic drama or a film about an ethical dilemma. It’s mostly a film about storytelling —about the blurred lines between life and fiction, and about what we call memoir or autofiction. From Johanne’s teenage perspective, of course, those questions are secondary; for her, what matters is the intensity of her feelings and the lived (or imagined) experience of the relationship. Along the way, Haugerud also weaves in family tensions, creative rivalry, and a subtle coming-of-age thread that traces Johanne’s emotional and artistic awakening.
The film can be overly dense and verbose, with Johanne’s voiceover narration accompanying nearly every scene. While her passion for her teacher is presented as something deadly serious —and it is, to her— Haugerud treats it with the solemn weight of a Bergmanian drama, which at times can feel exhausting. Still, a series of late revelations give the film an unexpected emotional turn, forcing us to confront the difference between how we perceive those we love —and how we later narrate them— and how they’re seen by others, stripped of that veil of affection.
Note: To make the Oslo saga even more confusing, despite winning the Golden Bear, Dreams will not represent Norway at the Oscars. That honor went instead to Sentimental Value —directed by none other than Joachim Trier.
