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| 'I've always been a mommy's boy'. So begins Elling's narration
in the film of the same name, but, as elsewhere in the film, his words are
a profound understatement of the truth. In fact Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen)
has not left his mother's house or talked with anyone other than her for
thirty years; and so, when she dies, he comes to be the guest of a Norwegian
mental institution. Elling and his fellow inmate, sex-obsessed headbasher
Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin), are discharged and installed in a flat, where
they 'are going to attempt a return to reality', learning to cope with the
ordinary contingencies of life - shopping, eating out, using a telephone,
peeing in public and forming relationships.
There is much to enjoy in this film: the euphemisms, evasions and downright prevarications which fussy, snobbish Elling employs, both as narrator and character, to cover up his failings and anxieties; his odd, touching friendship with Kjell Bjarne; the surrealistic pleasure of seeing everyday activities turn into major obstacles to be overcome; and Elling's transformation into 'the sauerkraut poet', where his mad creativity finds an acceptable outlet. Yet 'Elling' is not without its problems. In the first place, while it is a pleasant enough feelgood comedy, it is little else, so that its similarity to 'Bad Boy Bubby' inevitably invites a comparison in which 'Elling' comes out the clear loser. For 'Bad Boy Bubby' is also about the emergence into society of a strange man whose mother has hidden him away for decades, but it is a much more complex, multi-layered film which leaves 'Elling' looking like a son who failed to inherit his father's genius. Secondly, at various points in 'Elling' I found myself feeling distinctly uncomfortable with all the attempts to generate laughter out of the mental and/or social shortcomings of others. The film is studiously vague about the precise nature of Elling's problem, and it is even vaguer about Kjell Bjarne's, which perhaps somewhat mitigates the film's exploitation of them as figures of fun, but I couldn't help feeling that this vagueness, and the film's upbeat ending, were not enough to justify so much unreflective schadenfreude. In short, a light, superbly performed revamp of 'The Odd Couple', but hardly the insight into madness that it might have been. Anton Bitel |
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