Elling -- Theater Review

3:00 PM PST 11/21/2010 by David Rooney

There are a handful of quiet moments to savor in "Elling," the closing notes of which understate rather than force the tentative embrace of the real world by the play's barely functioning characters. But the delicate charms of Peter Naess' 2001 Norwegian screen comedy are more often coarsened and diluted in this strident stage adaptation.

The movie was part of a small wave of festival discoveries around that time, which notably included fellow Norwegian director Bent Hamer's Eggs and Kitchen Stories. In their gentle humor and eccentricity, the films departed from generalized perceptions of Scandinavian severity, particularly following all the blunt provocation of the Lars von Trier-led Dogme 95 movement.