| NORWAY |
| BUDDY |
Morten Tyldum |
Friends Kristoffer and Geir, 20-something slackers
at heart, put up billboards for a living and mostly just hang
out. Kristoffers’ main pasttime, when not messing things
up with his girlfriend, is recording their lives in impromptu
and sometimes wackily staged video diaries. When the pair
move in with an introverted website designer, Stig, his neurotic
life (he has been too fearful to even leave his block for
two years) becomes one of the camera’s subjects. One
day, some of the tapes featuring Stig are dropped in the middle
of making one of their prank productions and they fall into
the hands of the producers of a hit TV talk show. Soon, the
three become minor celebrities, but the price is the privacy
they took for granted. Part romantic comedy, part touching
drama about friendship, betrayal and the rites of passage,
Buddy mixes laughter and pain with a knowing humanity. Audience
Award for Best Film at the Karlovy Vary and Norwegian International
Film Festivals. (104 mins.)
First Feature.
SHOWTIMES: 2/19, 8:45pm B1 and
2/24, 6:30pm WH. |
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| KITCHEN STORIES |
Bent Hammer |
Set in ’50s Norway, Kitchen Stories lampoons
the mid-century mania that the solutions to society’s
problems lay in science. Observers from the Swedish Home Research
Institute descend on the rural village of Landstad to study
the kitchen routines of single men, whose habits theoretically
yield vital information on how best to raise domestic efficiency.
A wry, absurdist treatise on cultural difference and the bonds
of friendship, the story focuses on Folke, who arrives in
his specially designed motor home to observe Isak, an isolated,
habit-driven farmer. Folke is rendered helpless in the face
of Isak’s intransigence until, strangely and yet quite
movingly, the men begin to form a bond. Hammer demonstrates
a gift for sly, deadpan wit while Tomas Norstroöm and
Joachim Calmeyer’s beautiful performances memorably
etch the oddest of odd couples. (95 mins.) This year’s
Norwegian submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.
Filmography: Eggs (95), Water Easy Reach (98).
SHOWTIMES: 2/19, 6:30pm and
2/22, 4:45pm GU. |
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