NZIFF: Sex

Returning from last year’s Festival to screen alongside the rest of his Sex Dreams Love trilogy, Dag Johan Haugerud’s comic drama takes a candid and refreshing look at modern gender roles.

There has hardly been an investigation on contemporary male identity and sexuality as candid, insightful and hilarious as Norwegian auteur Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex. After winning all major laurels in Nordic cinema with his fresco Beware of Children (2019), the acclaimed director and author is now embarking on a trilogy Sex Dreams Love.

The first instalment opens on one of the most tantalising preludes in recent cinema. Two chimney sweeps frankly open up to each other on a coffee break: the first reveals that he dreamt of being checked out by none other than David Bowie; the other confesses that he accepted the sexual advances of a male customer who invited him to have sex with him. But both men are “straight” and married to women. Here, the deft tone of the film is immediately set.

A fervent admirer of Éric Rohmer’s thickly scripted love skirmishes, Haugerud infuses irony, depth and compassion in his elegantly composed tableaux depicting how the two men cope with the turmoil these experiences bring into their relationships with their partners and with themselves. Featuring some of the brightest and funniest dialogues of 2024, Sex is a real eye-opener. — Paolo Bertolin

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