Kitchen Stories

It's the early 1950s, and Sweden's Home Research Institute, having created the perfect kitchen for the national housewife, sets its sights on the Norwegian bachelor. The plan is simple: an inspector installs himself on a stepladder in the volunteer's kitchen and for weeks logs all movement and business in the room. While the scheme's originator flies back and forth across Scandinavia, ever more debauched and remote from research, an officious manager loses control of the exercise as inspectors drink themselves out of a job or, more likely, break the code of silence and distance which the task demands; conversations, even friendships ensue, none more poignant than that between the initially taciturn and suspicious farmer Isak (Calmeyer) and his intended overseer Folke (Norström). This is wonderfully warm hearted and entertaining cinema from one of Norway's most distinctive talents. Striking camerawork and design, pitch-perfect playing and writer/director Hamer's acute eye for the revealing detail all add up to a pantry full of enjoyment and often absurdist subversion.