‘Dreams in Oslo’: Berlinale Golden Bear is creative nonsense | Cinema: previews and reviews

To the point: assigned to. the Golden Bear of the Berlin Film Festival 2025 Dreams in Oslo, film by Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud, is probably the most unthinkable prize of the major recent film competitions. First of all for its quality: it is incredibly bad. And second, and almost more surprising, for its style, the antipodes of what the most prestigious festivals are used to selecting and awarding, and of what the majority of specialized critics are used to praising in this type of event: a work without the slightest visual ability or cinematographic language, which illustrates a lucid story, explicit to the point of exasperation and not only told without a moment’s respite, but above all told through an inexplicable and persistent voice in worn out which literally reveals everything the characters are thinking at all times. A (bad) novel shot (badly), we could say, except that it isn’t even part of a book, as it is original material for the film.

But cinema has never been this.

Perhaps someone will ask themselves and even state that, in his sixth feature film as director, there could be Haugerud’s merit: in his uniqueness, in his anomaly, in doing the opposite of what is usually done, in providing a mode of narration that escapes any conventionalism. Although what we should ask ourselves, and perhaps answer, is that the fact that no one films and narrates like this is for a simple reason: because it is horrendous for the eye, for the intellect and for the ear.

During the first (long) half hour of film, the voice inside worn out of a 17 year old girl not even for a moment. It has no cadence or interpretative power. Nor literary quality. There is no pause, there is no air. And he recounts in a childish way the process of falling in love with his new French teacher, illustrating the texts through a flat staging and photography slightly veiled in autumnal shades. The educator is cute and has a nice gesture, but since we barely hear her speak we don’t even know what she thinks. Until little by little you see that all that voice enters worn out The initial third is a piece of writing that the student prepared by venting her feelings and recounting the nine appointments she had at the professor’s house. Some meetings in which he taught her, surprisingly, how to knit wool sweaters.

After this, let’s call it, first act, Haugerud finally abandons (even if only intermittently) the voice in worn out, and a second part begins, even more ridiculous and dialogued until one faints, in which the harpy grandmother and the naive and tired mother, after reading the dozens of pages in which the girl’s passion has poured out, go through a double process, which goes from the surprising to the absurd: first they are convinced that there has been sexual abuse on the part of the teacher; and then they start looking for a publisher to publish the writing as a book.

Of the third act we will only say that, because the director feels like it and above all because it suits him, the hitherto fascinating character of the maestro changes into something very different. Having said that – and now the word is you, readers and potential spectators – the American Todd Haynes, as president, and the rest of the jury, considered it to be the best film of the last Berlinale. And, if you like, you can see Haugerud’s two previous works on the Filmin platform, Love in Oslo AND Sex, which end up forming a trilogy. It seems like a unique opportunity.