ELSKLING

Norway

Fiction

Maria juggles with four children and a demanding career while her second husband, Sigmund, travels all the time. One day they get into an ugly argument which led Sigmund to eventually ask her for a divorce.

Written & directed by: Lilja Ingolfsdottir
Produced by: Thomas Robsahm
Cinematography: Øystein Mamen
Editing: Lilja Ingolfsdottir
Production Design: Lilja Ingolfsdottir
Costume Design: Lilja Ingolfsdottir
Sound: Bror Kristiansen
Cast: Helga Guren (Maria), Oddgeir Thune (Sigmund), Elisabeth Sand (Maria's mother), Marte Magnusdotter Solem (Maria's friend), Heidi Gjermundsen (Therapist), Maja Tothammer-Hruza (Maria's daughter, Alma)

Statement of the director:
“If you don´t address your childhood traumas, your relationships will.”

LOVEABLE is a psychological film about a marital crisis, where an adult woman is forced to confront destructive patterns within herself. On one level, the framework of the story is quite classic, it is a relationship story. But the originality lies in how the film explores the psychological matter and develops into a self-exploration journey for the main character.
We're accustomed to seeing how emotional behaviour patterns in drama have consequences, but instead of portraying a classic dramatic narrative arc, I wanted to more closely examine WHY and HOW we behave as we do in close relationships.
I wanted to create a completely different narrative of a relatively normal marital crisis. By turning the inside out, we can glimpse the destructive mechanisms and programming that make life so difficult for us. The originality of this project, therefore, lies not in the action or characters being extraordinary, but how the psychological motivations in relationship issues are explored and uncovered. In this way, I could delve into the underlying spaces and provide an image of the normal madness that lives in many seemingly functional relationships, and how we as humans often behave in intimate spaces where no one else but our closest can see us.
The film therefore gives a fresh representation of the relationship between a woman and a man on film. Generally, we are told stories under this heading: Will they end up together? Is he the right one? However, after the first third of the film, the story is no longer about the love between him and her; the film is about her relationship with herself. What you think should be a romantic film about a man and a woman unexpectedly becomes a film about love and attachment to parental figures, and furthermore her own love attachment to herself. By challenging the pop-cultural portrayal of what love is, I wanted to point out an important cultural contemporary problem. What should the girlfriend/boyfriend phenomenon hold in our time? What are we expected to be for each other? Is it the case that if we just find love, the perfect partner, then we will be freed from our problems? And is loving someone synonymous with the other making us happy?
Through LOVEABLE I also wanted to give an opportunity to portray a truthful image of a modern woman. An exploration of what this strength could be. Instead of making her a victim or an independent woman with masculine traits, I wanted to create a woman who had the strength and wisdom to stand in her own vulnerability, face her greatest fear, and ultimately endure her deepest pain. The fear of being abandoned has made choices in her life. Both consciously and unconsciously, and through this, she realises how she has been manipulating to keep the fear of not being good enough at bay. To me, Maria is a true heroine. Her braveness lies in confronting shame and destructiveness within herself and through it, also understanding how she can break out of the martyr role and become the determinant in her own life.

Production:
Nordisk Film Production AS

World Sales:
TrustNordisk ApS
https://trustnordisk.com/

Press/Social Media Agency:
Nordisk Film Distribution
https://nordiskfilm.com/distribution-norway