May 8, 2026
Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Norwegian Film Saves Sex and Love
by Doniphan Blair
'Love (Sex Dreams)' hits escape velocity when teenage Johanne arrives at the home of her French teacher crush—the next line is 'Or my entire life would end.' photo: Dag Johan HaugerudPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
EVEN THOUGH CINESOURCE WAS
rejected for a festival pass this year at the Sonoma Film Festival, which we received annually since 2010, writer Randy Gordon and I decided—what the hell—let’s go anyway (read about our other cineSOURCE adventures, including in Sonoma here).
And, guess what, we had a TERRIFIC time, as usual. I even got a nice, old-fashioned Airbnb three blocks from the square, and we saw some great films and ate some fabulous food, which is the added bonus of the Sonoma or Napa festivals. Although I can only mention one film, due to budget constraints, it was so good, it will make up for not reviewing our standard three or four.
“Dreams (Sex Love)”—the title includes the parenthetical for reasons I will explain below—hails from Norway, and is insanely good, in that master-of-the-cinema manner the Nordics exude, especially in their now-famous noirs, although this film reverses the noir aesthetic. Not only is “Dreams (Sex Love)” sunny, romantic, childlike and vulnerable (see trailer here), it turns the gender, race and feminist complexities of our day on their head, not to mention it features fabulous film crafting, but slyly. In fact, “Dreams (Sex Love)" pretends to be workman-like, which allows it to periodically take your breath away when it blossoms into effervescent beauty.
The set up is simple: a drab-looking, totally-typical Norwegian (blond but barely attractive) teenage girl, Johanne (excellently character inhabited by Ella Overbye), falls in infatuated, horn-dog sexual attraction as well as mad love with her beautiful, organic, arty AND, last but not least, brown French teacher (Selome Emnetu), until the multicultural onion starts peeling.
First Johanne writes about the affair, which turns into almost 100 typed pages, which she gives to her feminist single mother (Ane Dahl Torp), who is outraged she didn’t already know about her only child’s first sex. They are an open, honest, ultraliberal and share-everything family, after all.
Johanne finally explains all to her miffed mother. photo: Dag Johan HaugerudBy the way, this all unfolds in an innocuous we-live-at-IKEA-but-wild-things-are-happening-in-the-all-gender-bathroom kind of way, so you’re not distracted by braggadocio flourishes but still periodically amazed by the precision and symbolism of the film crafting.
It all seems fine and good—our hero has survived her first brush with the thirsty demon of romantic sexual love—until her mother shares the story, despite her explicit promise not to, with Johanne’s grandmother (Anne Marit Jacobsen), who happens to be even more of a feminist and also an artist.
Indeed, Grandma is a published poet and probably prominent, although the filmmakers don’t make a big thing of it—that supposed Nordic modesty, which is actually their way to virtue signal. As you may have already guessed, mom and grandma eventually mollify their anger and Johanne accepts their apology. (In case you didn’t know: mothers ALWAYS read their daughter’s diaries, even after they swear not to, and the ones who claim they don't are usually lying.) Moreover, Grandma decides the diary is good enough to submit to her editor.
Although there’s no girl-on-girl nudity—unfortunately, since sex is a part of life, cinema portrays that part much better than novels or sculpture, and the Nordics are supposedly nude-positive, due to their tradition of co-ed saunas—and Johanne only has sex with her teacher nine times (if I recall correctly), the story keeps climbing up, expanding out, engorging, as it were, on increasingly complex subjects. As it broaches new ideas and feelings, both for the characters and for us, we are soon reeling from the many but fully motivated narrative reverses.
You know the way some films have three or four endings, and you wish the filmmaker would just stop upping the ante, and stood pat at the simple and solid first or perhaps second, which would have made the film sharper and more succinct, “Love” has three ending—but, in its case, each one is better than the last.
Dag Johan Haugerud, the 60-something ex-librarian who is reinventing romance as well as sex and love for the post-woke era. photo: Dag Johan HaugerudThe biggest shocker comes with the credits, when we learn “Dreams (Sex Love)” was not written by a teenage girl or even an avant-garde feminist but a nerdy looking, middle aged man, Dag Johan Haugerud. Ironically, he came up as a librarian before becoming a novelist and then a filmmaker, which rocked Scandinavia with a number of hot ones, starting with "I Belong" (2012), which won the Nordic Film Prize (a whopping $7,000 US).
Indeed, “Dreams (Sex Love)” is called that because it is the third part of the trilogy, along with ”Sex” and "Love"—all three were completed in 2024, and began winning awards all over Europe. I desperately want to see the other two, but they are not available on standard streaming services.
Soon to be at an art house near you, I recommend getting off the couch because hot sex couched in smoking hot culture is the only way we'll solve the romantic crisis currently rendering us unloved and unlovable as well as killing us (literally, our population decline). Sadly, American arts are so woke they will probably cancel this masterpiece because it was by a man.
Posted on May 04, 2025 - 11:55 AM
by Doniphan Blair
'Love (Sex Dreams)' hits escape velocity when teenage Johanne arrives at the home of her French teacher crush—the next line is 'Or my entire life would end.' photo: Dag Johan HaugerudEVEN THOUGH CINESOURCE WAS
rejected for a festival pass this year at the Sonoma Film Festival, which we received annually since 2010, writer Randy Gordon and I decided—what the hell—let’s go anyway (read about our other cineSOURCE adventures, including in Sonoma here).
And, guess what, we had a TERRIFIC time, as usual. I even got a nice, old-fashioned Airbnb three blocks from the square, and we saw some great films and ate some fabulous food, which is the added bonus of the Sonoma or Napa festivals. Although I can only mention one film, due to budget constraints, it was so good, it will make up for not reviewing our standard three or four.
“Dreams (Sex Love)”—the title includes the parenthetical for reasons I will explain below—hails from Norway, and is insanely good, in that master-of-the-cinema manner the Nordics exude, especially in their now-famous noirs, although this film reverses the noir aesthetic. Not only is “Dreams (Sex Love)” sunny, romantic, childlike and vulnerable (see trailer here), it turns the gender, race and feminist complexities of our day on their head, not to mention it features fabulous film crafting, but slyly. In fact, “Dreams (Sex Love)" pretends to be workman-like, which allows it to periodically take your breath away when it blossoms into effervescent beauty.
The set up is simple: a drab-looking, totally-typical Norwegian (blond but barely attractive) teenage girl, Johanne (excellently character inhabited by Ella Overbye), falls in infatuated, horn-dog sexual attraction as well as mad love with her beautiful, organic, arty AND, last but not least, brown French teacher (Selome Emnetu), until the multicultural onion starts peeling.
First Johanne writes about the affair, which turns into almost 100 typed pages, which she gives to her feminist single mother (Ane Dahl Torp), who is outraged she didn’t already know about her only child’s first sex. They are an open, honest, ultraliberal and share-everything family, after all.
Johanne finally explains all to her miffed mother. photo: Dag Johan HaugerudIt all seems fine and good—our hero has survived her first brush with the thirsty demon of romantic sexual love—until her mother shares the story, despite her explicit promise not to, with Johanne’s grandmother (Anne Marit Jacobsen), who happens to be even more of a feminist and also an artist.
Indeed, Grandma is a published poet and probably prominent, although the filmmakers don’t make a big thing of it—that supposed Nordic modesty, which is actually their way to virtue signal. As you may have already guessed, mom and grandma eventually mollify their anger and Johanne accepts their apology. (In case you didn’t know: mothers ALWAYS read their daughter’s diaries, even after they swear not to, and the ones who claim they don't are usually lying.) Moreover, Grandma decides the diary is good enough to submit to her editor.
Although there’s no girl-on-girl nudity—unfortunately, since sex is a part of life, cinema portrays that part much better than novels or sculpture, and the Nordics are supposedly nude-positive, due to their tradition of co-ed saunas—and Johanne only has sex with her teacher nine times (if I recall correctly), the story keeps climbing up, expanding out, engorging, as it were, on increasingly complex subjects. As it broaches new ideas and feelings, both for the characters and for us, we are soon reeling from the many but fully motivated narrative reverses.
You know the way some films have three or four endings, and you wish the filmmaker would just stop upping the ante, and stood pat at the simple and solid first or perhaps second, which would have made the film sharper and more succinct, “Love” has three ending—but, in its case, each one is better than the last.
Dag Johan Haugerud, the 60-something ex-librarian who is reinventing romance as well as sex and love for the post-woke era. photo: Dag Johan HaugerudIndeed, “Dreams (Sex Love)” is called that because it is the third part of the trilogy, along with ”Sex” and "Love"—all three were completed in 2024, and began winning awards all over Europe. I desperately want to see the other two, but they are not available on standard streaming services.
Soon to be at an art house near you, I recommend getting off the couch because hot sex couched in smoking hot culture is the only way we'll solve the romantic crisis currently rendering us unloved and unlovable as well as killing us (literally, our population decline). Sadly, American arts are so woke they will probably cancel this masterpiece because it was by a man.
Posted on May 04, 2025 - 11:55 AM
