Troubled Water

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Troubled Water has already won two of Norway's official film awards for 2007 (it was nominated for six), as well as walking away with the Audience Award at the 2008 Hamptons International Film Festival -- which I find a little surprising. Audience awards almost always go to feel-good movies (even sometimes to good feel-good movies) but Troubled Water is too complicated a film to fit easily into that category. It deals with victims and perpetrators who are themselves victims, slowly piecing together past and present as it keeps looping back and in on itself -- in order that we might better understand the complexity of the situation and the pain that drives two of the leading characters forward.

Religion plays an interesting part in the puzzle, too, and for a change offers more questions than answers or consolation. One young woman, the church's priest, upon being told she sounds naive, responds, "I am naive; that's why I'm a priest." Troubled Water begins with a kidnapped child and continues through prison, rehabilitation, re-entering society and the lives of the two "families" involved in the situation. Water imagery is fluent throughout, and the many sequences of flashbacks/memories are handled in a more sophisticated manner than usual: They seem closer to the way the human mind actually works than the slick editing-cum-light-show that we often get from filmmakers regarding this subject.

Organ music is also a highlight of the film (one character is particularly adept at it and we hear a lovely organ rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water"). The cast of a half-dozen lead players (two of which are shown above and two more below) and as many again in supporting roles is -- to a man, woman and child -- excellent. Above everything, however, hovers the pain that comes with the loss of a child. This persists, as we learn in one superb scene set around a restaurant dinner table, no matter how that loss occurs. Troubled Water, from Film Movement, comes complete with the usual short subject that appears on all of FM's titles - a Serbo-Croation film called "The Kolaborator," which is well worth a watch.