This memorable debut from Norway’s Eva Sorhaug follows several of Oslo’s suburban inhabitants as each grapples with the collapsing foundations of their safe and pastoral lives. As they do so, they wander Oslo finding saviours, redemption, possibly even hope through their interconnection in the lives of others.

Of the protagonists there is Christer; a hopeless but easily content soul. He loses his job, his home and leans on everyone possible for support. His destiny may lie in whether or not he can swallow his pride necessary to do the right thing in order to find his way back to the small, meagre life he once lead. Leni, an agoraphobic, lives with her aging father. Her simplistic life is turned on its head when one of life’s expected turn of events turns up unexpectedly.
Heidi is a beautiful mother and a doting wife. She is trying desperately to build a family, to affirm the very nucleus of society. But from within that very nucleus, hard physical truths are being presented to her almost daily that only ever try and deter her from gaining that perfect existence she dreams of.

Much like any number of films these days – including Hollywood’s finest Pulp Fiction or even Magnolia, the Turkish Edge of Heaven, any Guillermo Arriaga film or even the Scandinavian films Dark Horse and Frozen Land – this is a tale of the intertwining lives of many ‘normal’ everyday people in ‘normal’ everyday situations dealing with everything life throws at them. Much like the aforementioned Scandinavian films, the characters here are introduced to us gently and succulently. In the same way then; the names arrive on the screen, the chapters of the film are announced with wry titles such as ‘Some thing almost unexpected happens’ and a carefully plotted and paced dark comedy opens before us.

Scandinavian film has had a huge resurgence over here in the last few years and it is easy to see the appeal. The characters are a mixed blessing of the real and unreal .The story lines are both a valid mix of the real and unreal and each film contains flecks of films we are familiar with, nods in homage to better known more commercial fieldings. Cold Lunch follows this general outline but not in a very comfortable fashion.

The characters here are good and bad. The Leni character I feel is underdeveloped. Her background, much like Heidi’s, is never explained. Her agoraphobia is certainly treated in the film but only very faintly. She is so starkly strange and out of sync with the rest of the world in both actions and appearance. She only eats one type of food and looks like a garden pixie. One cannot help but wonder; are there actually real people like that? Take the very first scene; a car accident. While a man lies mangled in the street, the cars occupants wrangle over who takes the rap. It feels like a lifetime going by before someone gets out and checks on the body. And one is left asking again; are there really people like this?
The Heidi situation is more realistic. The trapped marriage. The fear of dying alone. The child keeping her with this man. But nothing is explained about how she got there and why. Christer is a wandering everyday student. Broke and down on his luck. His is, in a way, the only fully realised story by the end. We realise how far he is willing to go to suture his situation and what kind of a man he really is. He, at least, can come out of the whole tale with his head held high and live proudly with his well held morals.

The lack of dialogue does not help. This is a very Scandinavian thing. Dialogue is only there if absolutely necessary. Most scenes and emotions are conveying through the eyes, the gestures. Which is all very well for talented character actors (Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road anyone?). But here, these passages of lingering silence and haunted facial expressions, the greatest assets of French cinema in my opinion, are misused. The characters need more to flesh themselves out.

As with most adult Scandinavian films, the partly comedic essence peels away and sooner or later a scene of great reality unfolds before us. There are two in this film. Both attributed to Heidi. One a rape scene and the other, well, that would be telling. It is hard to balance all this however. The ending is both bizarre and disturbing. I laughed uneasily. But this is just another example of the unevenness of everything here.

I am not sure what the finale is saying or at least trying to say, if anything at all. Though visually, the film looks beautiful and there are some nice ideas, it hangs too much faith on the films gone before, better films. Copying the formula is quite obviously not as easy as it might look. But for those new to the genre, this would make a nice introduction. Nice but uneven.