A urologist and her gay male nurse are non-committal in their pursuit of relationships with others, but their array of experiences challenges their worldviews on love, sex and the ‘morality’ of values, in this outstanding middle entry of Haugerud’s loose thematic ‘Oslo’ trilogy. 

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I first started with Sex (2024), then Dreams (2025), then back to this middle instalment of Dag Johan Haugerud’s ‘Oslo’ trilogy. 

It’s a loose thematic trio of intricately devised pictures centering on human relationships, particularly physical and sexual intimacy, so you don’t really need to follow any viewing order. The strongest for me was Dreams, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear, but Love here is as insightful and provocative. 

Seeing these films reminds me of the mouthful of a title from Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s sophomore feature, What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love (2013).  Here, it’s the opposite; it’s ‘what they talk about’—however blunt and explicit, or warm and empathetic. 

Build around scene after scene of conversation, mostly 1-on-1, sometimes in group settings, Love explores human sexuality in the modern age, though more crucially, in a progressive society like Norway, where these stories are set. 

It is virtually impossible to remake these films in conservative countries.  Even my very own—the cosmopolitan, capitalistic Singapore—is not ready for a filmmaker tackling such material in the local context. 

“I just take the ferry, back and forth.”

This is probably why it was rated R21 here, the most restrictive classification category, and why open-minded Singaporeans might feel it to be a breath of fresh air, perhaps even quietly radical. 

A urologist and her gay male nurse both avoid romantic relationships like the plague, unwilling to commit more than just casual sexual encounters. 

But as they each encounter the prospect of a probable connection, their experiences challenge their worldviews; at the same time, they may also inadvertently change the lives of others. 

Haugerud modulates the long conversations with a particular sensitivity to sound.  Let me share two examples: One, he would use non-diegetic music for part of the dialogue, then ‘revert’ to the noise of its diegetic environment, making us listen not just more carefully, but making the oscillations between the psychological and sensorial more pronounced. 

Two, a very prominent machine-like whooshing sound always accompanies the departure or arrival of the ferry that many of the film’s characters take to transit from one place to another.  Over time, it becomes an aural signpost for personal recalibration after every trip.

Grade: A-

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