Director: May el-Toukhy (Denmark, Sweden). Year of Release: 2019
A Nordic forest in the middle of Winter. A woman walks her dog through the snow. She reaches a cabin where her young twin daughters are playing in the garden. They tell her that “dad” is inside. When she finds her husband, she asks why he hasn’t left yet. The police have called. He has to go to Sweden. We are told no more about the significance of this scene until it is repeated towards the end of the film.
Anne and Peter have a comfortable but staid marriage. They both have jobs which help pay for their luxury house. She is a lawyer, working with mainly female victims of abuse. He is a physician, who is often away on business. They sometimes have friends round who have equally respectable jobs. Peter sometimes resents Anne bringing her work home with her, and allowing her clients stay over, but this is about as hard as their life gets.
Their complacently is shaken when Gustav, Peter’s son from a previous marriage, comes to stay. Gustav is a spoiled rich kid, who has been playing up at school. Peter’s ex-wife can’t cope any more, and suggests sending Gustav to boarding school. Maybe because he feels guilty at having not been part of his son’s childhood, Peter suggests that Gustav first comes to stay with him, his wife and their young twin daughters.
Gustav clicks immediately with the girls, but is consistently sullen with his father. He has a more complicated relationship with his stepmother, who is friendly, but looks pained when he invites a girl with a leather miniskirt home, where they have loud sex. Then, one day, there is a break in at the house. While washing Gustav’s clothes, Anne finds evidence that Gustav was responsible. She confronts her stepson, saying that if he doesn’t step up to the plate, she’ll narc on him.
Gustav integrates himself into the family, though he still remains distant with his father. Anne rewards him by buying him a laptop. He goes swimming with the girls, and Anne overcomes her fear of water by going out for a swim. She and Gustav splash water at each other, and soon the girls are joining in. Later, Anne has a cosy evening with her stepson, and allows him to give her a tattoo on her inner elbow. When playing hide and seek with dad and the girls, he brushes her arm.
After another boring evening with visiting boring friends, Anne first dances on her own to Tainted Love (the Soft Cell version), while the others look on blankly. Then she abandons her husband and his friends and walks off to a nearby pub, taking Gustav with her. Inside the pub, she asks him intimate questions, and concludes the evening by kissing him on the lips. He is taken aback, confused by her behaviour.
While Gustav is trying to cope what the fuck is happening here, Anne makes it clear when one night she wanders into his room. First she gives him a blow job, then she offers him sex. The pair start a sexual affair. Although this is all initiated by Anne, you do not get the impression that Gustav objects, more that he is overwhelmed by the whole experience. At first, their possibly criminal behaviour does not cpme across as being particularly abhorrent.
Some critics have self-righteously asked the apparently rhetorical question: would we have the same reaction if Anne were an older man and Gustav a young girl? Well, no we wouldn’t and nor should we. The power relations between men and women are such that it is difficult to conceive of a relationship between an older man and a girl which is not abusive. Anne’s relationship with Gustav is much more ambiguous – at least until Peter gets wind of what is happening.
Anne promptly throws Gustav under the bus. Although initially neither seems to have overwhelming power within the relationship, we now see that Anne holds all the cards. At first we can excuse her behaviour as being the natural reaction to being trapped within a vapid unfulfilling marriage. Surely Anne was just lonely? But the longer things develop, the more we see that she is quite prepared to use the privileged she gains from her class and wealth.
Anne’s transgressive behaviour is brought more into focus by us witnessing her professional life. She confronts a suspected rapist in a car park, and work colleagues admonish her for going too far. She coaches a rape victim approaching trial, urging her not to back out for the sake of other women who have had the same experience. A victim of abuse at first pleads that she does not rat out the abusive father, but later visits Anne at home with flowers. Is she a saint or a hypocrite?
Most reviews paint Anne as a downright villain, but I think it is quite possible to view her as both a perpetrator and a victim. We view her looking disconsolately at her naked body in a mirror. A shot towards the end of the film, when everything is supposed to be ok again, sees Anne and Peter undressing for bed, facing pointedly in opposite directions. Yes, Anne is part of the propertied rich and should be despised for this, this does not mean that she is not unhappy.
In the reviews that I’ve read, there is a general feeling that Anne’s behaviour is reprehensible – not because she shows complete disregard for Gustav’s feelings, but for having sex with him in the first place. But how old is Gustav, anyway? I’d guess around 17. Now I’m not sure about Norway’s laws, and maybe Anne having sex with him is illegal. It is certainly misguided, but is it opprobrious? I find it less easier than some to make a moral judgement here.
Whatever, you do not have to agree with Anne (and ultimately I don’t btw) to see that Königin is asking some important questions about consent and autonomy. I think it is right that it does not explicitly take a side. Instead, we are shown a morally ambiguous situation and asked to make our own judgement. Isn’t that what good Art is supposed to do?
CinePhil 