Ikke naken

Being my first movie in this year's Berlin Film Festival, this was a treat. A story about a 12 year old girl experiencing first love more or less against her will, set in rural Norway (beautiful photography). Elin grows up in a chaotic family where men and women just don't get along with each other. She decides never to be interested in boys and to concentrate on science instead. But things change when she befriends a boy who seems to share her interests and a mysterious Swede appears...

Unlike many other children's movies of this year's festival, "The Colour of Milk" has a very light atmosphere and its script sparkles with humour. Rewarded by a Special Mention from the children's jury, this is fun to see for both older children and grown-ups. (8 points)

I was slightly bored by it at first, but it didnt fail to intrigue me. It's BEAUTIFULLY filmed and its such a sweet movie! Gives me similar vibes to 80s and 90s American family films, which I'm in love with. This movie also hits hard ngl, especially watching it at an older age. But overall, its a stunning movie!!

I think that, surprisingly, the kid actors gave better performances than the older members of the cast, who gave bad performances. Otherwise the film felt uninspired and unoriginal, focusing on a story that's been regurgitated millions of times before.

"Ikke naken" disappointed me. Here's why: The director's 1998-movie "Bare skyer beveger stjernene" was a beautiful little piece about a girl dealing with her brother's death while the family temporarily disintegrates. At the same time she meets a boy and finds some sort of first bonding/love. Sounds simple, but it really worked, due to solid natural sounding dialogue, somber editing and not too much over-acting (even from the children's main characters). Actually it's one of the better Norwegian movies from the 90's, and quite underestimated.

This movie, however, lacks the good script, the child actors are not able to deliver the lines in a natural way, the editing is over-simplified (I know it's more of a children's movie, but still) and the music is just too much, beautiful as it may be.

In short: It lacks a bit of subtlety and nuance, and it's obvious where it's going. I'm usually quite tolerant with movies, but this one started to really bore me after 30-40 minutes. Maybe children will like it more? Also, huge parts of the dialogue have been re-recorded/dubbed, and you find yourself getting seriously annoyed about how little synchronized it is. At points it looks like the actors originally spoke a different language, then were dubbed to Norwegian. This, of course, contributes to taking you out of the cinema-experience.

Finally I should complain about the lack of any subtitles on the DVD - don't the Norwegian distributors want to sell films outside of the country?