Johanne writes about falling in love for the first time. It’s an in-depth, very intimate story that began a year ago, when she was in a vacation cabin with her mom and a friend and she had to say in the cabin because she was sick and read a book which made her feel tingly. A year later she experiences the same feeling when she gets a new teacher who almost has her name: Johanna. Johanne’s story has a lot of details, for example, how Johanna always wears artfully hand-knitted sweaters, and how she feels when she sees the coarse wool on Johanna’s soft skin. Johanne begins to look for Johanna when she’s at school, and her friends notice who absent she is. But Johanne tells no one about her intense crush. Instead, she writes everything in order to keep it for herself.

But then she does show her text to her grandmother Karin, who is a writer, and she, in turns, shows it to Johanne’s mother Kristin, and so the text changes, and so does the perspective that Johanne has on her own story. Karin and Kristin have questions, primarily about what exactly happened after 17 year old Johanne went to Johanna’s apartment to ostensibly help her with school troubles and to learn how to knit. Does the text indicate an abusive boundary crossing? It is complete? But both women are also fascinated by Johanne’s story that trigger feelings and memories of feelings, and they see its literary potential. Should Karin show the text to her publisher? The narrative changes again and so does Johanne’s relationship to her.

While Johanne’s text goes on a journey. DREAMS gradually continues to tells the story of her infatuation. But just like the text, the film also contains holes and omissions, it’s not quite clear if the images we see are the complete truth or just an excerpt that Johanne wants to let us see. At times, the film also moves away from Johanne and her first-person narrative, capturing the ripples her story makes in small scenes, with Karin, Kristin, and the publisher. Director and screenwriter Dag Johan Haugerud only needs a few, fantastically written, and at times amusing, dialogues to make these three believable characters.

On one hand, DREAMS is a very simple film that tells a small story without dramatic twists. On the other, DREAMS is a very complex film that reflects on several cleverly nested levels how texts, the reality they describe, and the people who write or receive them are connected to each other, and how their meanings are subject to constant change - depending on who says or hears what, when, why, where, or even keeps silent. And, ultimately, DREAMS is a very friendly, comforting film about changeability. Where most films attempt to transform an ambiguous and messy reality into a meaningful story, DREAMS attempts the opposite. Every scene, every character, every form of discourse adds a new facet to the world DREAMS depicts, making it larger, more open, more diverse. For me, DREAMS could have simply gone on and on.

Despite this, or perhaps because Haugerud focuses entirely on the most private of narratives, DREAMS is also a political film. Johanne repeatedly mentions economic realities in her observations in passing. Above all, however, Haugerud insists on detail, a diversity of perspectives, and details, thus opposing narratives that try with all their might to establish hegemonic clarity.

Hendrike Bake (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy