Review: Hawaii, Oslo (SIFF 2005)

There's plenty of movies that involve a range of unrelated characters that are tied together with a singular place or event (like Amores Perros, or Kilometer Zero). They're tricky to make in such a way that they don't seem forced. Hawaii, Oslo falls into this camp of movie, and it fortunately does a great job of not only avoiding this trap, but being inventive on top of it.

Hawaii, Oslo is primarily a movie about love; brotherly love, romantic love, friendship love, parental love, and love (or maybe it's compassion) between strangers are all presented as part of the storyline's intertwining of characters and plots.

These are the threads, or character sets, in Hawaii, Oslo:

• A couple who is having their first baby, and who then discovers that it has a debilitating disease that only an expensive American clinic can cure
• A suicidal pop star who is saved by a papergirl on her morning route
• A couple of orphaned boys, angry at the loss of their father and risking separation into separate foster homes
• An institutionalized kleptomaniac and his long lost love, who both agreed to meet at the age of 25 if they were both single, and an institution nurse who watches over them.
• The kleptomaniac's brother, who receives an escort from prison only to rob a bank and try to flee the city.

Reading the above list, one would think this movie is about the most depressing of the genre. Quite the contrary; Erik Poppe manages to squeeze quite a bit of situational humor and humanism out of the characters and their interactions. He also slowly uncovers the mysteries of each character for you, without explicit lines or cues shown all at once. The result is an engaging movie that leaves you feeling love for the characters, adding to the movie's core theme.

Overall rating: 9.0/10.0

Details:
Runtime: 125m
Countries: Denmark / Sweden / Norway
Language: Norwegian