A few years ago, my sister-in-law came to stay with my wife and I and over dinner told us about a friend she’d been developing deeper feelings for. They’d gone to graduate school together and were of the same clique, but an intimacy had grown between the two she was struggling to ignore. While my wife felt inclined to ask more questions and break the situation down further, I simply asked, “Do you lie to your friends?” My sister-in-law paused for a moment, then said, “I don’t see why I’d have a reason to.”
“Then why are you lying to one right now?” I responded. She offered a few excuses — she didn’t want to ruin the friendship, plus, while she’d had male partners, this was the first time she’d be expressing feelings for a woman — but ultimately registered that holding onto these emotions and thoughts would be no better than the possible fallout from putting them in action. Today, she and her partner have a house, a dog, a cat, and a loving relationship that may not have formed had she held onto the dream inside her mind rather than making it a reality. And though it heartens me to consider myself a part of her eventual happiness, things very well could have gone the other way, shifting the perception of my advice from insightful to perhaps something more trite and ill-conceived. After all, I couldn’t go into the mind of her crush and see how she felt about the matter.
This conflict of parsing the interior elements of the human experience is what’s at the crux of Dag Johan Haugerud’s Golden Bear-winning drama, “Dreams (Sex Love).” Serving both as a living portrait and past reflection of teenage sexual awakening, Haugerud utilizes various storytelling tools to draw viewers in, from extensive voiceover narration detailing the thoughts and feelings of the film‘s central character, Johanne (Ella Øverbye), and a symphonic score by Anna Berg that elevates our sense of her emotional journey to poetic imagery that amplifies how one dream can influence the dreams of others. In truth, one of the deep studies Haugerud seems to explore in his work is how dreams aren’t just held while one is sleeping, but as a function of our daily lives.
How does one find passion for something — whether it be romance or knitting — without first taking the time to dream about what it may bring to their life? Of the same token, how does one cast judgement over another without first dreaming up a potentially false perception of them? One need only look at the state of our world and the rising threat of authoritarianism to understand that, one way or another, we’re all at the whim of someone else’s dream while simultaneously trying to hold onto our own. But what happens when that dream meets reality? Does it cease to exist? If others are now aware of it and encouraged to decipher meaning from it, does it add an intent to the dream’s conception that wasn’t initially there?
These are the questions that swirl as we’re introduced to the life of Johanne, a 17 year-old who’s been brought up by her mother, Kristin (Ane Dahl Torp), and grandmother, Karin (Anne Marit Jacobsen), and came of age amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic. This fact is pointed to early on in the film and allows us to make sense of how Johanne manages to be so in touch with her inner monologue, as she likely had more than enough time to grow close to it during periods of lockdown. By grounding Johanne’s journey in this conflict and in the challenges of maintaining one’s sense of youth during these times, Haugerud captures something vital about growing up in today’s world, as well as a universal story of first love blossoming at the moment we start to seek more out of life and existence.
For Johanne, this first love unfortunately just happens to be her new French teacher, either coincidentally or serendipitously named Johanna, though when a fellow student introduces themselves as Johannes, one starts to recognize it may just have more to do with this story taking place in Oslo, Norway. Nonetheless, a door opens for Johanne in seeing a part of herself in this older, hip and artistic educator that refuses to shut even after she’s written about her infatuation in a novella she shares with her poet grandmother. As the story moves back and forth in time, showing both the relationship developed with Johanna via the novella’s depiction and how the contents of this piece are later dissected by Johanne’s mother and grandmother, rather than shy away from the complexities of an inappropriate affair, “Dreams (Sex Love)” faces them head on and with a focus on expanding the conversation instead of landing on easy answers.
As immense and fully-formed as Johanne’s sensations for Johanna may be and as nurturing as Johanna proves towards her student, their attraction towards one another is never consummated sexually, slightly relieving any spectator who may be turned off by this dynamic. However, the lurid thoughts communicated in Johanne’s prose are enough to send Kristin and Karin into a spiral over how Johanne could possibly have come to felt this way. For Karin — a published poet herself — her concern is quickly outmatched by the impression Johanne’s romanticism has left on her, even going so far as to take credit for the way Johanne has phrased certain sensations. Kristin, on the other hand, initially fears this writing might be a cry for help, but once she’s given further details directly from Johanne, she too starts to see the novella’s potential value to others.
In putting a spotlight on Karin and Kristin interpreting their loved one’s work, Haugerud establishes the great irony with dreams, in that once they are out of the mind and in someone else’s hands, they often take on a new meaning. A debate between the two over anti-feminist features of the 1983 drama “Flashdance” serves as a coded response to the complexities of narrative interpretation, just as Johanne’s own emotional struggle is marked by the biases of her subjective experience. In an attempt at reaching the truth and giving Johanna a chance to tell her side of the story before Johanne’s novella is published, Kristin ends up meeting with the teacher at a small café. After she makes clear to Johanna they have no intent of pressing any charges, Kristin tries to get her to admit her feelings for Johanne, if for no other reason then it will help a mother make sense of why her young daughter would enter into such an entanglement. But that’s not what Johanna is here to do.
Instead, Johanna pushes back, not denying what was written by Johanne happened, but taking every precaution not to imply she was the one to bring this on. Even so, by remaining so nonchalantly defensive, her own complicity in allowing Johanna’s feelings for her to grow becomes even more clear. This all in spite of Johanne’s best efforts to present Johanna in the most radiant of lights, a fact Johanna deems as abusive more than flattering. Again, Haugerud complicates our understanding of Johanne’s dream, not to upend any notion the audience may building of this cerebral teen, but as a way of confronting how these amorphous, non-physical forces drive every aspect of our being, yet are constantly vulnerable to misinterpretation and folly.
It makes one think back on David Lynch and how he was never inclined to unpack the logic of his art. For him, the sooner the audience accepted they were inside a dream and went along for the ride instead of trying to make sense of it, the better. Though Haugerud does at one point expose us to what is formally considered a dream, he is far more interested in exploring the process of how a dream is unleashed unto the world and the effect it will have on those it comes into contact with. For Johanne, her dream of being with Johanna and it subsequently being shared with the world through her now published novella ultimately leads her to a psychiatrist’s office, a place where sense is meant to be brought to the subject of life and dreams. However, as she finishes her 90 minute session — of which we know she was the main communicator based on the voiceover that’s run throughout the film — she struggles to comprehend why she should be talking about her dreams rather than out in the world chasing the next one. Not long after, she heeds her own advice and does just that, even if it leads her down a road she’s worked hard to move beyond.
“Dreams (Sex Love)” marks the third and final entry in a loose humanist trilogy from Haugerud that evokes Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors” series, but also manages to make its own mark. Individually, the films are about the conversations that steer our lives and inspire new thought, with “Sex” following a pair of cis-male chimney sweeps who experience a shift in their perception of sexuality and “Love” exploring how a woman takes on an unattached approach to romance after learning about her male colleague’s own permissiveness. “Dreams” completes this triptych by acknowledging that when it comes to matters of the heart and really life in general, we’re all operating from a place of hope and fantasy. I may not have known what was underneath my sister-in-law’s desires when she sought advice from my wife and I all those years ago, but I do know, as “Dreams (Sex Love)” does as well, that living and dreaming don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Grade: A-
“Dreams (Sex Love)” premiered at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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