MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

By Alexandria de la Cruz

NINA, the first feature film directed and written by Maria Winther Olsen, is a psychosocial thriller and drama about abandonment, isolation, and loneliness- in love, no less! The scene is set in the Faroe Islands a remote mountainous tundra in the middle of the dark, cold oceans of the North Atlantic. A place where not many people live and the people who do live there are deeply rooted in the island’s unique culture and way of life. The story begins when newly licensed physician William played by Nikolaj Dencker Schmidt has taken a promising job and with him is his pregnant girlfriend Nina played by Marie Tourell Søderberg who figures the solitude of the island will inspire her to write a novel.
William becomes instantly absorbed by his duties at the hospital. Nina wounded by his blatant neglect and disregard of her efforts to make things work; finds herself both obsessed with the Faroese myth of the Seal Woman and its poetic similarity to her circumstance. According to the legend, seals are former humans who died willingly by the sea, once a year they shed their seal skins, amusing themselves as humans. A young farmer from the village who was skeptical about the legend found himself spying on this ritual, and upon seeing a seal transform into a beautiful maiden: steals her seal skin. She is subsequently trapped as his wife; so long as he holds onto the key of the chess where the seal skin is sealed away (pun intended). One day, many years later, he goes off to hunt for seal with the other village men when he realizes that he has forgotten the key. He goes home to find their children and himself abandoned.
Nina’s relationship with a handsome young priest Fríði played by Mike Viderø begins to develop as her understanding of the myth unfolds. She starts to find herself suffering vivid daydreams that begin to confuse her sense of reality and launch her into what is perceived by William as a sort of histrionic psychosis. Of course, all of this is just a dramatic interpretation of someone coping with sudden abandonment in a relationship in tandem with the cultural shock of a new environment. Oh, and let us not forget that Nina is pregnant.
The acting was emotive, especially from the lead actor Marie Tourell Søderberg. She was just as much pregnant as her character Nina during the film which made her skill even more impressive and of course her character more believable. The subtitles were off during decently large sections of dialogue where Fríði explains the myth, which made the metaphors a bit confusing to understand, but eventually, I was able to put the pieces together after some cursory googling of the legend Kópakonan (which translates to the Seal Woman). In fact, I don’t speak Danish, so I don’t know for sure, but the English subtitles seemed off in general which boils down to my perception of the writing, which is the biggest weakness I found in the film. The dialogue as translated was stiff.
I liked that there wasn’t music in the film; instead, there were only dramatic sound effects in well-orchestrated sound design. Perhaps, that served not to distract the viewer from the action of the film and to create more theatrical suspense. The cinematography was powerful, the beauty of the Faroe Islands, or at least the beauty of the images of the Faroe Islands brought by the film’s cinematographer, Jonas Berlin, are imprinted in my mind as I write this.
The film had a minimal setting; the story mostly takes place in Nina and William’s house and the surrounding area (the ocean, the mountains) which honed that feeling of isolation, aiding the story’s development and the viewer’s interpretation of Nina’s emotional state. The setting and tone of the film closely resemble the Ingmar Bergman film Passion of Ana (a personal favorite of mine) also about isolation in love and similarly takes place on a remote island in the North Atlantic. So, yes, I would certainly recommend this to someone interested, seriously, in cinema because it is a serious movie, rich in both artistic and humanistic value; I’d even call it culturally anthropological. I think the director was effective in expressing the story that she wrote, but as the writer; I can’t say for certain. I do also feel she heavily relied on these artistic staring out in the distance looking contemplative shots, but what else does one do really when they are in a remote very limited environment, it could be argued it plays into the realism of the character’s situation.
In short, the film has broadened my perspective on Danish cinema, in general, and in contemporary filmmaking from that part of the world. This film has introduced me to Faroese folklore, culture and way of life. And NINA has reassured my faith in simple yet complex filmmaking. There isn’t much else I can say without spoiling the film. There is a worthwhile twist that plays into the psychological thriller element of the film which made the lack of dialogue and heavy reliance on metaphors and imagery tolerable: If you’re patient! I hope to see more films like this in the future.