Giraffe

It’s a film of big themes on an intimate scale that lovingly acknowledges the unimaginable wealth of stories inside everyone we encounter, while also looking at how we negotiate the place of memory in our lives.

The film’s vibes are melancholy and Scandi-modern, cozy and bougie, here are lovely interludes of fallow fields in white-nights summer twilight, and scenes filmed over FaceTime or as video messages nicely evoke the textures of this interconnected, transient century. The becalmed mood and associative dramaturgy at times recalls Angela Shanelec, though Hartmann is not quite as rigorous.

It’s a movie whose subtle thoughts are in danger of being upstaged by a potent and erotic love story that surfaces and then disappears, leaving you uncertain whether finally to be more interested in that romance or the ruminations it has interrupted – or enlivened.