Cinema review
Directed by Jens Lien
Starring Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Petronella Barker, Birgitte Larsen, Per Schaaning, Johannes Joner
Release date 25 May 2007 (ICA)

A solitary bus passenger, Andreas (Aurvåg), is dropped off at a remote petrol station and taken to a quiet, childless city where lovers have no passion, food lacks flavour, booze doesn’t make you drunk and even acts of self-mutilation and suicide go unnoticed…

Hackneyed though terms such as ‘Kafkaesque’ or ‘Lynchian’ may be, The Bothersome Man deserves to be mentioned alongside such mind-bending existential classics as Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, as well as other modern tales of paranoia and alienation, such as The Truman Show. As with Truman and Groundhog Day, The Bothersome Man contrasts its doom-laden protagonist with wry black comedy.

Made in Iceland and Norway, the film has much to say about contemporary living, as Andreas, the unremarkable office worker, slips into a loveless relationship with a woman who cares more about interior decoration, while the colleague with whom he has an affair turns out to be a slut.

Trapped in this limbo-like world, Andreas is driven to desperate measures, like chopping off his finger, simply to feel something. The sequence where he is repeatedly hit by subway trains is genuinely nightmarish, but again it’s tempered with humour immediately afterwards. And people say the quality of life is supposed to be so good in Norway...Ian Calcutt

VERDICT: 8/10

Jens Lien’s allegory about a man trapped in a kind of ‘grey hereafter’ is definitely worth bothering with.