By Leslie Felperin. Contributing Film Critic. Honest, thoughtful, and daringly talky as it observes modern dating customs in the age of apps, it deserves further exposure beyond the festival circuit. In contemporary Oslo, Marianne Andrea Braein Hovig is a physician specializing in urology, which means we first meet her breaking the bad news to a stunned patient that he has prostate cancer. He makes a point of seeking the man out to offer clarification.
On the way over, Tor explains how he uses Grindr to scout out potential lovers and often finds himself having trysts on the ferry itself, with guys who cover the whole gambit of male sexuality, from straight men into cruising to out ones looking for a life partner. The gesture sort of works, but things move much slower for these heterosexual folks. It will take another date or so, and lots of in-depth conversation about circumstances and life goals, before Marianne and Ole Harald will finally go to bed.
Nevertheless, her curiosity about app-assisted hookups is piqued. Meanwhile, with the sort of gentle symmetry that makes the film so engaging, we see Tor starting to rethink his commitment to no-strings shagging.
On the ferry one night he meets Bjorn Lars Jacob Holm , a handsome daddy a good 20 years older than Tor who has barely ever used Grindr before. Bjorn shyly backs out of having sex on the boat, but opens up to easygoing Tor in conversation.
The unfussy camera setups by DP Cecilie Semec, lit so as to benefit from the low-angle sunlight of Nordic summer nights, unfurl in long languorous takes that just sit back and let the actors do all the work. Fortunately, the cast here is well up to the job, and the dialogue, especially between Hovig and Jacobsen, have a charming musicality about them, like bright duets. Love, to quote that woozy old ballad, is indeed a many-splendored thing that takes many forms β a multiplicity that Love the film is quietly alive to.
