Drømmeslottet

With stagy, hammy acting and overformulated, often intellectualized dialogue, the films by the Norwegian filmmaking duo Svend Wam and Petter Vennerød were often panned, and ultimately ridiculed, despite often attracting large audiences and addressing relevant sociological issues. Drømmeslottet ticks all these boxes, but in contrast to some of their less successful films, it has a brilliant script with real drive and purpose. The filmmakers have things to say here; they hit out at the solidarity movement and collectivism of the 1970s, and not least how the people involved tended to politicize their socializing with other members of the society. What's best about Wam and Vennerød's point-making here is how they're never one-sided. Most ideas and reactions are put under the microscope, and as they often did, Wam and Vennerød had the audacity to make it all bizarrely entertaining by letting their eccentric characters clash in every which way. By the end, you're no longer annoyed by the theatricality of it all - you're embracing it.