Fjord review: Palme d’Or winner has an incendiary plot for arthouse liberals

Fjord

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Director: Cristian Mungiu

Cert: 15A

Starring: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Lisa Carlehed, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Henrikke Lund-Olsen, Vanessa Ceban

Running Time: 2 hrs 26 mins

Cristian Mungiu, among the wiliest directors currently at work, won the first of his two Palmes d’Or for a film about a woman trying to secure an illegal abortion in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania. He followed up 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days with Beyond the Hills, about a potentially fatal exorcism, and RMN, dealing with organised racism in Transylvania. His interest in the mechanisms of authoritarian systems could scarcely be any clearer.

It could therefore be seen as provocation that Fjord, which secured Mungiu his second Palme earlier this year, takes its inspiration from the true story of Pentecostal parents, originally from Romania, whose children were taken from them by Norwegian social services in 2015.

Protesters alleged the parents, accused of “smacking” their offspring, were being discriminated against because of their faith. Incendiary stuff for the habitually liberal attendees of arthouse cinemas.

Few will find fault with the fastidious way in which the director constructs his narrative. A well-scrubbed Renate Reinsve and an unrecognisable Sebastian Stan play Lisbet (like Reinsve, a Norwegian) and Mihai (like Stan, born in Romania), a nursing-home worker and an engineer, who move from the husband’s home nation back to the wife’s following the death of his parents.

Is the title of the film allegorical? Is it getting at the fissure soon to develop?

At any rate, they do, indeed, literally find themselves dwelling between icy waters and fast rising slopes.

Mats Halberg (Markus Tønseth), headmaster at the nearby school, lives next door with his wife, Mia (Lisa Carlehed), a lawyer, and their children. Elia (Vanessa Ceban), the new arrivals’ daughter, is soon close friends with Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), Mats’s child from an earlier marriage. All seems well. But Elia’s tendency to proselytise rings a few early-warning bells.

All this is filmed in beautifully composed medium shots by Tudor Vladimir Panduru that rarely allow us intimate connection with the characters. The distance (emotional and literal) is similar to that one would encounter in the theatre.

The best word for what then develops is “infuriating”. Child services appear with wads of documents that ask the reader to reduce complex life to easily encapsulated summaries. Bruises have been spotted on Elia during PE (at which we see much competitive wrestling), and the professionals seem determined to come to the grimmest conclusion.

Testimony from Elia and her brother – understandably confused – buttresses that case, and the children are taken into care. The parents have admitted they spank them, but they deny anything that could reasonably be classed as abuse.

[ Renate Reinsve: ‘We too have tallest poppy syndrome. Ireland has that, right?’Opens in new window ]

What follows is brilliantly paced and consistently gripping. Language becomes a weapon. Is “spanking” the same thing as “beating”? The words certainly have different potencies. Lisbet and Mihai are not supposed to be on trial for their religion, but it does feel as if their occasional illiberalism is seen as a potential offence.

Stan and Reinsve pitch their performances perfectly. Nobody will confuse them with happy-clappy Ned and Maude Flanders. They are serious people who, though open to friendship, treat life as a moral trial. The actors allow just enough cracks to open for us to squeeze in a little empathy.

Very compelling, very provocative, but is Mungiu pressing his finger on the scale? Only insofar as most storytellers will. We can’t tell exactly what happened behind closed doors, but, for all the Nordic reasonableness of the officials’ language, there is no denying that the process, as here depicted, is a class of superior railroading.

The film yearns for society to tolerate the views of even those with whom it disagrees. There is an argument that injustice in the pursuit of justice is never acceptable. Good luck with that.

Fjord will continue to enrage as many as it intrigues.

In cinemas from Friday, November 13th