Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

ms_otis_regrets And we are supposed to feel fine about it. This black comedy is a stranger comes to town story (although in this case the community comes to the stranger, since he is housebound through grief after suffering a spinal cord injury) that capitalizes on the bad-behavior genre. The violence and cruelty in the movie -- there is a surprising amount of violence, although it results in very little gore -- express a universal urge to rage against bad luck, and this is the pleasure viewers are supposed to derive from watching. Unfortunately, in this pre-#MeToo movie, this violence is overwhelmingly directed at a woman. The woman who receives this violence is one of four able-bodied characters, and, as the facilitator of a support group for people with disabilities, she represents authority. She also represents the system and the vapidity of mainstream culture, which is a substantial narrative stretch, since people who work in care are almost always disadvantaged women. To cover this stretch, she is presented as the author of a book about the group that has just been accepted for publication. This plot point touches on interesting issues about representation of illness and disability, but, like the issue of suffering as competition also raised by the movie, the treatment is confusing and unresolved. At some points, the group members are shown as collaborators, and at others, victims of exploitation. The other women in the movie come in for a lot of abuse, too; the long-suffering girlfriend, the group member whose suffers a mental illness rather than a physical disability, and the woman with quadriplegia function primarily as sexual objects. Their agency is limited to providing sexual access. The men in the movie don't benefit from this; their agency is limited to sexual performance, and this, it seems, is the real problem of the badly-behaving hero stranger. In this film, the men's violence stands in for sexual performance; by battering a woman, they demonstrate they still have some agency. Bigger issues about loneliness and guilt are raised in the process of farcical sexual pursuit, but, like the suffering-as-competition and disability-porn themes, they aren't explored with any depth. Instead, the badly-behaving hero is cast as redeemer, and the narrative ends with the perplexing message that deliverance comes in the form of a wealthy white man with a big gun, booze and weed. The long-suffering girlfriend rides off into the sunset (sunrise, in this case) with the stranger, who has, one hopes, finally realized clinical potency isn't required for sex. Farce and loose threads aren't problems. The ambiguity and dominant theme of moral anarchic catharsis would be enjoyable if it weren't for the sexist framing of the violence in this film. The assaults endured by the group facilitator are simply too realistic, too close to the harassment and abuse endured by women in all kinds of workplaces, particularly care work, to fall under black comedy. This film literally gave me nightmares, and will give nightmares to many women who have experienced sexual, verbal, emotional and verbal assault of the kind that has been overlooked or trivialized.

richard_sleboe This guy has it tough, no doubt about it. An accident put Geirr (Fridtjov Såheim) in a wheelchair, literally bringing his life to a standstill. Disability insurance has made him a wealthy man, but he spends his days locked in a darkened room, watching "Apocalypse Now", listening to "Folsom Prison Blues", doing dope and booze, following the example of the Man in Black himself in nearly every way. Geirr's girlfriend Ingvild (Kirsti Torhaug) tries to grin and bear it, but it's obvious she could use some help. Well, she isn't going to get it from Tori (Kjersti Holmen), an annoying Martha Stewart type self-help guru, or her flying circus of misfits. Instead, Geirr is about to teach the group a valuable lesson and serve them a "hot dog for your brain." Great performances. Extremely refreshing. Surprisingly violent. But these clowns, they had it coming. See it with your kids.

Chris Knipp Breien's film about handicapped people is a corrective. It mocks programs that offer false cheer, repress the need to express anger, and don't give people who need to do so the right to take things in their own hands.Things get lively as soon as Tori (Kjersti Holmen),a smug therapist who works for the Norwegian state health system, takes her group of variously dysfunctional folks in a van to the house of Geirr (Fridtjov Såheim), a wheelchair bound man who's refused to join the program. If she thinks she's going to win Geirr over, she's got another think coming. As we see before the group arrives, Geirr, who's paraplegic and impotent from a car accident, doesn't get along with his wife Ingvild (Kirsti Eline Torhaug) and likes to spend his time getting high, drinking beer, listening to Johnny Cash albums and watching war movies.Tori has brought quite a motley crew. There's Lillemor (Kari Simonsen), a middle aged divorced woman in a neck brace. Marta (Marian Saastad Ottesen) is a pretty woman. She is paraplegic too, from a mountaineering accident. Gard (Henrik Mestad) is her self-righteous, self-pitying boyfriend. Asbjorn (Per Schaaning) is an older man who is seriously damaged by a stroke and can hardly speak. Tori imposes a regime of forced cheer. It's obviously gone too far with Marta, who wears a fixed rictus smile. Lillemor is perpetually whining. She gets to voice her complaints into the knitted "shit bag," which Tori passes to people who want to say something uncheerful.Ingvild has invited the group over because she can't take Geirr's withdrawn grumpiness much longer and is desperately hoping they can get through to him. The surprise is that it's he who gets through to them. Geirr doesn't want anybody to try to tell him that things are okay for him. By shaking up the group and expelling Tori and encouraging the others to admit what's really going on inside or alternately dropping their facades of self-pity, Geirr releases a swoosh of energy in the group that flows back to him. It turns out he's a pretty together fellow. He becomes the leader--and the exponent of The Art of Negative Thinking. The group helps him by pointing out that of all of them, he's materially the best off. He lives in a big, beautiful house, while some of them are struggling to survive financially. Others also reveal what else is going on with them, that Tori's bossiness had kept from coming out. Marta stops smiling long enough to point out to Gard that his failing to tie her off is why she fell. On the other hand he needs to stop agonizing over that and move forward. Lillimor doesn't really need the neck brace. Asbjorn gets so involved in the proceedings, which involve some useful drunken revels, that he regains some of his power of speech. In time Tori is allowed back to apologize and the air has been cleared.The solutions the group, with Geirr, arrive at relate to 12-step recovery, which assumes as a given that people must help themselves and you don't know what it's like unless you've been there yourself. Nobody who hasn't dealt with the minute to minute hardships of being disabled has the right to tell handicapped people to keep their chin up. You have to acknowledge the dark side to get to the light. When being honest is the prime requisite it also comes clear who has been faking and who can get a lot better fast if they try.But this isn't some kind of instructional film. It's a somewhat theatrical happening, whose improvisational surprises at times suggest the work of Lars von Trier. The actors manage to seem real and at the same time somewhat stylized.This is a nice little film that somehow seems ideally a product of the angst-ridden world of the Scandinavian northland. But a lot of what goes on here is universal, and by no means restricted to the handicapped--or to Norwegians.Seen as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2008.

dejawolf what you might expect when entering the theaters for this movie is a sad little feel-sorry movie from ice-cold Norway. I mean, how can a movie with handicapped people be any fun? well, lets start with the colourful ensemble of characters in this movie. first there's of course geirr, an impotent wheelchair bound master of the negative, that looks like he's been to Vietnam and back a dozen times, who compensates his lack of "drive" with a ridiculously large handgun. there's also a rebellious grandmother, a stroke-victim, a paralyzed woman with a grin plastered firmly on her face, and a cast of control-freak "healthy" people. mix this together, and you have a healthy dose of facades being torn down for some self-destructive letting lose. its a fresh breath of air amidst the dreary number of gangster wannabe movies thats been pouring out of norwegian cinemas.as a bonus on the DVD, you get a small movie about a thug with a bad back filmed in a documentary-style manner, which is also worth a watch.another glittering gem in Norways collection of weird little movies.