First released in European cinemas in 2015, and now seeking a new audience on Netflix, this genre-twisting Norwegian drama offers a fresh take on its taboo-breaking subject matter to deliver a film that is unquestionably provocative and unnerving but also frequently frustrating.
Children’s dance instructor Charlotte (Ine Wilmann) is a dissatisfied thirtysomething who feels herself to be alone in the world. She’s looking for the kind of intimacy and passion that her musician boyfriend cannot provide. Her emotional fragility is made worse by the behaviour of her grandstanding narcissistic mother, and the decline of her terminally ill father. Despite her mother’s objections, she seeks out her estranged adult half-brother Henrik (Simon J. Berger), who’s married and has a young child. Once reunited, Charlotte and Henrik struggle with the intensity of their mutual attraction and begin an ill-advised and doomed affair. But theirs won’t be the only lives that are turned upside down by the fallout from their transgression.
Director and co-writer Anne Sewitsky frames the controversial central theme of Homesick through the lens of Charlotte’s disappointment and sense of longing. This allows her to present the pair’s erotic entanglements as driven more by aching loneliness and confusion than by lust – nostalgia for a feeling of attachment they never enjoyed. Berger is good as the brooding, emotionally inarticulate Henrik, while Wilmann is even better as the self-destructive but endearing Charlotte. It’s a well shot and evocative film, with a tight narrative focus on its extended familial ensemble. But Sewitsky offers few glimpses into her characters’ motivations or inner-lives, focusing exclusively on their ill-advised actions. Which means that Homesick is nowhere near as insightful as its makers might hope.
HOMESICK is now available in the UK courtesy of Netflix
