“Oslo Stories: Longing“ begins over the roofs of the eponymous Norwegian capital, because the protagonists of this film are chimney sweeps. At the beginning we briefly see them doing their daily work, at the highest altitudes, but only from a certain distance. At the same time, the film by Norwegian writer, director and librarian Dag John Haugerud also seems to be very interested in the city itself – in its architecture, its squares, construction sites, and above all its streets. But “Sehnsucht” quickly breaks away from this, and Cecilie Semac’s extremely idiosyncratic, expressive camera zooms in on a window. In a kind of break room, a strangely anonymous, empty place in between, we meet the two nameless protagonists – the chimney sweep (Jan Gunnar Røise) and his superior (Thorbjørn Harr) – again.
The two are engrossed in a men's conversation, which can hardly be further removed from the “locker room talk” made famous by the old and new US presidents. When his boss describes a recurring dream in which he meets David Bowie and who looks at him as if he were a woman, the chimney sweep replies that yesterday he had sex with a man for the first time in his life. He's still not gay, after all, he's never thought about going to bed with a man before and he doesn't plan on doing it again. Only at this particular moment did it seem like a good idea, and it was also very nice. He also enthusiastically told his wife about this experience.

The conversations between the chimney sweeps are as amazing as they are touchingly open and honest.
It's an amazingly open, intimate and trusting conversation that the two friends at work are having with each other – a conversation that it could be like if it weren't for all the expectations and role models that we associate with heterosexual masculinity in our society. A conversation that belongs to a world that has unfortunately not yet been realized, in which we can say anything to each other, trusting that those we confide in want us well and are trying to understand.
But of course it doesn't work out as easily and beautifully as the chimney sweep imagined – even to the astonishment of his friend. His wife reacts irritated and hurt to the supposedly good news – and does not understand the matter-of-factness and casualness with which her husband tells her about his spontaneous extramarital experience with a customer. And while she struggles with the question of what to do now and even considers a divorce, he tries increasingly desperately to explain to her that it never occurred to him that she could do this event, that it had nothing to do with her and their love for each other as a betrayal of their marriage.
“Sex” actually describes it much better
A lot is discussed in this film, because the chimney sweep's colleague and his son also get a whole series of their own storylines, in which, among other things, the Christian faith, a refrigerator, an injured hand, a rash as well as the pros and cons of processing the Play a role in everyday life in your own YouTube channel. This is often astonishingly honest and just as often hilarious. And then there is this digression in black and white, a little story told by a doctor about a gay architect couple and a Frank Lloyd Wright shoulder tattoo, which ends completely differently than expected: the expected moral of the story is rejected , which is why the intermezzo works excellently as a reflection of the protagonists of this wonderful film. Yes, yes: “Oslo Stories: Sehnsucht”, whose original Norwegian title is, by the way, the more prosaic and apt “Sex”, is a dialogue-heavy film.
But that doesn't mean that he is formless or that he is not interested in his visual level. Quite the opposite: “Oslo Stories: Longing” is also a city film, an architectural film that is interested in Oslo from the always somewhat abstract perspective of a city planner. Life is a construction site, and a major highway in this film. Again and again cranes tower over the roofs of high-rise buildings, places are still being developed, the omnipresent traffic rushes past in the background and sounds like the sound of the sea. And really all the streets that run in the foreground or background through the extremely carefully framed shots of this film have curves.

His wife doesn't react to the chimney sweep's confession quite as understandingly as he had hoped.
The way in which urban architecture is removed from its role as a mere background for events and discourse and elevated to the equivalent theme of “Oslo Stories: Longing” is somewhat reminiscent of the most recent phase of work by the German experimental film director Heinz Emigholz. For over a decade and a half, he had staged a cycle of minimalist, wordless architectural films comprising several films – until he used the film strategies developed for this purpose in “Streetscapes (Dialogue)” for a powerfully eloquent dialogue film that remained fundamentally rooted in the documentary and yet had a quirky, abstract and pervasive quality and developed through a new-feeling shape.
And Dag John Haugerud is also one of those directors who appear in the cinema once every few years and give the impression that someone is doing something completely new. That someone makes films like you've never seen before and expresses their very own view of the world in them. And if such a rare case occurs, then there is actually nothing that can make you happier in the cinema. In the case of Haugerud, this discovery has been far too long in coming, as the Norwegian has been making films for more than two decades – short, semi-long and extra-long, experimental and narrative, often literary films in some way, none of which are translated into German made it to the cinema.
Reversed order
At 60, he is definitely no longer a young, talented up-and-coming director. All the nicer and more important that his trilogy about “Sex/Dreams/Love”, which was somewhat clumsily titled “Oslo Stories” in Germany, is now available with “Oslo Stories: Love” (April 17th), “Oslo Stories: Dreams” ( May 8th) and “Oslo Stories: Sehnsucht” (May 22nd), three films by Haugerud appear in Germany in quick succession – albeit in the wrong order, because they are actually about The most recently released “Sehnsucht” is the first film in the trilogy.
Conclusion: A thoroughly humanistic work whose film language develops its own unique form between quirky humor and avant-garde playfulness. “Oslo Stories: Sehnsucht” actually opens the trilogy about “Sex/Dreams/Love”, but concludes it in the German cinema release order – and in every order it is one of the most beautiful and clever and touching and original films currently available can see in the cinema!