‘Sex (Dreams Love)’ Review: A Subtle Study of Men at an Emotional Crossroads

The first installment of this Norwegian trilogy—whose structure can be examined here—focuses on the explosive consequences that follow the mutual revelation of certain sexual acts or desires between two colleagues who work cleaning chimneys across the rooftops of Oslo. These confessions unsettle them both emotionally and in far more concrete ways. While Dreams –winner of the Berlinale’s Golden Bear– is an ambitious film built around a complex formal structure, Sex is narratively more straightforward and direct, though no less intriguing in thematic terms.

The protagonists are two male friends whose names we never learn. Like Dreams, the film is constructed around a small number of long scenes, with dialogue that often carries a distinctly theatrical resonance. Haugerud—perhaps to give the viewer some breathing room after these verbal sparring matches—frequently cuts away to musicalized urban shots, scored in a somewhat curious manner (the soundtrack sounds like a selection of soothing tunes fit for elevators and waiting rooms), resulting in something like an IKEA version of Yasujiro Ozu’s cinema. Within this calm yet subtly uncanny aesthetic, we come to know the two men.

Thorbjørn Harr plays the character we might as well call “the mustache,” in the absence of a name. Everything begins when he tells his friend and subordinate—played by Jan Gunnar Røise—about a strange dream he had, in which someone resembling David Bowie gazes at him intently, making him feel like a beautiful woman. The dream leaves him visibly confused. His friend raises the stakes by sharing something far more concrete: after work the previous day, he had sex with a man—a client—, something he had never done before in his life. He insists he is not gay and that this is not what the experience was about. What seems to connect both men is the attention they receive from these figures, real or imagined: being looked at with desire, without being asked for anything in return.

The 15-minute opening scene sets in motion what follows, which unfolds largely as two parallel stories. On one side, “the mustache” begins to notice changes in his voice and a strange itching sensation in his body, while also talking with his teenage son, who is himself entering adolescence and experiencing unfamiliar feelings. Both end up seeing doctors for their respective issues, navigating a series of awkward situations, and eventually speaking with the woman who completes the trio—the wife of one and mother of the other—to address their concerns. All of this takes place against the backdrop of rehearsals and performances by a religious choir in which they all participate.

The religious dimension is worth noting. Being Catholic in Oslo, the characters remark, is something people tend to hide even more than their sexual choices, but here is another coincidence that both men, and families, share. The latter is dealing with more immediate consequences: he chose to be honest with his wife and told her about the sexual encounter with another man, and she reacted badly. The film tracks their attempts to navigate the shock caused by this revelation and to determine whether their marriage can survive it. At least initially, the disclosure seems to affect her more than him, as he downplays the experience as purely occasional and without consequences for their marriage. But it won’t stay that way.

Dag Johan Haugerud’s characters speak about their feelings and sensations with a striking degree of honesty and sensitivity, something that may feel unusual—or even disarming—for some viewers. The truth is that they themselves do not fully understand what is happening to them and are searching for ways to cope. Is it, as others suggest, merely a case of parallel midlife crises? Is there something at stake in their recognition of a fragile masculinity that both occupies and unsettles them? And what, exactly, are they supposed to do with these new sensations?

Sex does not attempt to provide answers so much as to open these parallel conflicts to an ever-expanding set of questions. Haugerud allows them to intermingle in ways that are at times effective, occasionally repetitive, and, in rarer moments, rather baffling. The bond between the two friends does not necessarily point toward a romantic relationship between them, but instead places them side by side in the face of emotions they are not accustomed to feeling. Perhaps this unexpectedly pleasurable sensation of “feeling desired” is connected to the increasingly questioned position of traditional masculinity—a condition that has left many men uncertain about their place in the world and how they are supposed to act within it. This curious and sensitive Norwegian film sets out to explore precisely that terrain. The next two installments aim to complete the picture.