Sex Film Review: Dag Johan Haugerud Educates Us

In Sex, writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud teaches us sexuality, masculinity, relationships, and gender and sexual identity with the story of two chimney sweepers looking for answers.

There is no sex in Dag Johan Haugerud’s movie, unlike what its title might suggest. Instead, you’ll find plenty of scenes of characters having conversations in environments that aren’t particularly exciting. But it’s through these dialogue-heavy, seemingly uneventful scenes that the film manages to ask the right questions, and does it in a way that’s both thought-provoking and, if you’re into this specific brand of humor, surprisingly funny.

Sex begins with what we assume to be a therapy session. The camera is fixed on a nameless man (Thorbjørn Harr’s “Supervisor”) as he recounts a dream he had whose meaning he doesn’t understand. “At first, I didn’t realise it was Bowie; I thought he was God,” he says, explaining that, in his dream, he was coming out of a bathroom stall and the singer was there, looking at him through the mirror. “It felt like he looked at me as if I was a woman,” he continues, “It was only when I woke up that it went from feeling liberating to feeling…” “…uncomfortable,” says someone else outside of the frame. That’s when the camera pans, revealing that his interlocutor is not a therapist but a co-worker (Jan Gunnar Røise’s “Chimney Sweeper”).

The latter has a story of his own to share, but he does it in a much more matter-of-fact way. As the camera pans again to focus on him alone, he tells his colleague that, the day before, he had sex with a man. “I didn’t know you were gay,” says Supervisor, as if following a subconscious need to immediately give him a label. “I’m not gay,” says Chimney Sweeper, just as quickly, explaining that it had never happened before; a stranger offered, he felt like it, and it was “sensational”. “It was just sex; I don’t consider that cheating,” he adds. But his wife (Siri Forberg) disagrees. “I don’t know who you are; I can’t trust you anymore,” she tells him, later that day, convinced, too, that he must be gay.

With these opening scenes, Dag Johan Haugerud immerses us into his characters’ lives from the very first frame of the film, and tells us everything we need to know about them. Sure, we’ve never met them before and there’s so much we ignore about their lives, yet something about the questions they ask both themselves and each other makes us highly interested in their lives. Why do we place so much importance on sex? Why do we feel the need to own the person we love? Why can’t we just let them explore their identity and trust that it won’t change how they feel about us? And, going back to Supervisor’s dream, why isn’t there a way for people to look at each other without gender dynamics coming into it?

The paradox, here, is that we already know most of the answers. Of course there should be a way for people to be looked at without them needing to feel like either men or women, and of course a man isn’t less of a man if he finds himself attracted to another man. Sexuality is fluid, so we shouldn’t feel any shame for feeling new urges and desires, and one should be free to explore their own identity without having to put a label on it, and without being afraid of hurting someone else. Yet at the same time, these themes are so universal and there’s still such stigma attached to them that we are also aware of how complex it is for these ideas to really be accepted or even discussed.

These are all themes we desperately need to talk about in our current society, and what lets Dag Johan Haugerud approach them so well in Sex is the combination of fantastic performances from the entire cast and a script that’s filled with humor. There’s something about this movie that really got to me, from the contrast between its most ridiculous lines and the serious way in which they’re uttered to Supervisor and his son’s (Theo Dahl) hilarious conversations on their trips to the doctor to a loud, electronic score that clashes with the film’s visuals and narrative in a wonderfully off-tone way. And then there’s Haugerud choosing to make his protagonists chimney sweepers, out of all professions in existence, which is just pure genius.

More importantly, Sex is a movie with a heart, with true relationships at its core and scenes that might even move you to tears. This is a film that exists on a very specific wavelength, but if you’re able to get on board, you’ll find it both highly enjoyable and deeply enlightening.

Sex will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 14-15, 2024. Read our list of 30 movies to watch at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival!