This film is about a dancer. Or, not really. It's more about this dancer's relationship with her family. But not really that either. Actually, it's about religion. And as it turns out, the whole dancer and her family is kinda irrelevant.
And herein lies the problem: Writer/director Jorunn Myklebust Syversen starts out the movie with one theme, then moves on to another, and then another, and another... without giving us a reaction or conclusion to any of them. It's almost like the first episode of a tv-show, where we're presented with one brooding conflict after the other, before we simply move on to the next thing. But as there is no second episode and the story never follows up on any of these conflicts, we're left with a row of events sorely missing an dramatic arch, and the whole film feels like it's missing both the 2nd and 3rd act.
There is a very basic "law" in screenwriting called Chekhov's Gun, which states that: "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired." In other words: Every action need a reaction, and Jorunn Myklebust Syversen would greatly benefit from learning this simple lesson, so that her films would be more than just a string of loosely connected events.
And herein lies the problem: Writer/director Jorunn Myklebust Syversen starts out the movie with one theme, then moves on to another, and then another, and another... without giving us a reaction or conclusion to any of them. It's almost like the first episode of a tv-show, where we're presented with one brooding conflict after the other, before we simply move on to the next thing. But as there is no second episode and the story never follows up on any of these conflicts, we're left with a row of events sorely missing an dramatic arch, and the whole film feels like it's missing both the 2nd and 3rd act.
There is a very basic "law" in screenwriting called Chekhov's Gun, which states that: "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired." In other words: Every action need a reaction, and Jorunn Myklebust Syversen would greatly benefit from learning this simple lesson, so that her films would be more than just a string of loosely connected events.
