L'Étrange Festival - XXIth edition - September 3 - 13 2015

Today at the festival

Monday 14 September

18H00 - Cinéma Méliès - Montreuil - 20 years shorts of strange

19H30 - Cinéma Méliès - Montreuil

L'élan WP

In the presence of the team.

21H30 - Cinéma Méliès - Montreuil

Norway of Life

Den brysomme mannen
2006.
Color.
95 mn.
Original version with French subtitles.
Directed by : Jens Lien.
Produced by : Jørgen Storm Rosenberg.
Screenplay by : Per Schaaning.
With : Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Petronella Barker, Per Schaaning.
Country : Norway, Iceland.
Genre : Fantasy.

Depressed, Andreas decides to jump under the subway to kill himself. Then we find him on a bus taking him to a nameless town. He is there assigned a flat and a job but everything seems disembodied.

Between Franz Kafka, Groundhog Day and the series The Prisoner, Jen Lien's (Johnny Vang, Sons of Norway) second feature film really stroke its audience with its heavy and absurd, aseptic and soulless ambiance. A decade and multiple awards (among them Cannes' ACID) later, Norway of Life doesn't seem to stop both troubling and charming by its delicious ferocity.

Sunday 6 September 2015 - 16:45 - Showroom 300 - Presented by Benoît Delépine

Back to schedule

Benoît Delépine

I wanted to propose one of Aki Kaurismaki’s movies but the management of the festival prevented me from it, arguing that all his movies had already been shown at the festival. Enraged, I decided on another northern author. Why do they fascinate me so much? Certainly because of their lack of fear facing silence. They knew how to move from silent films to quiet films with no care at all. In The Bothersome Man, Jens Lien, as a Finnish master, is able to show us the unconscious of his country in only an hour and a half. If the first one does it in a Chaplinesque way, Lien's way is closer to Polanski's early works: without explanations, establishing a vague unease, disturbing the main character as much as he can, and the audience with him. A little jewel of dark humor that will save you the trip to Norway.