Dragonflies

This three's-a-crowd study of stir-craziness in the Norwegian back of beyond, is a tenuous, ephemeral affair, but not without a certain gauche, wild-eyed sense of adventure. Dramatically, we're in Harry, He's Here to Help territory. Out where the rushes grow, barnacled Eddie (Bodnia) and his younger lover Maria (Bonnevie) have bedded down in escapist tranquillity, only for Eddie's old partner in crime Kullman (Persbrandt) to turn up, check in and flip them out. Kullman is soon veering from fibbing about the neighbour's dead dog to cutting himself up with a chainsaw. Director and co-writer Holst treats this with a grainy, get up and go camera style and disjointed lyricism that smacks of latterday Lars von Trier; there's a comparable psychological woolliness, too. The three leads give it their all, but they're unanchored. Bjerkestrand and Furuholmen's soft timbre piano accompaniment frames the story as a lullaby, but it's a slightly unhinged one. (From a story by Ingvar Ambjørnsen.