Critic Reviews

This superbly acted drama’s refusal to serve up tidy epiphanies might leave you wanting more. But the inchoate nature of the central characters’ self-reflection is partly the point in a smart movie with a lot on its mind.

Sex certainly comes up early and often in this playful, intricately nuanced character study, but in consistently surprising, stereotype-averse ways.

In the end, Sex is a compelling exploration of ordinary men trying to figure out who they are permitted to be, how they are evolving and what their lives are all about.

Sex, which Haugerud has said is more about love––and that Love is about sex––is a film teeming with ideas in which “sex,” both as an act and identity, is eruditely investigated in search of an unnameable essence.

It’s a knowing smile of a drama that leaves you eager to follow Haugerud through his other two new films about the life of the mind, the last and best of which (“Dreams”) recently won top prize at the Berlinale.

The film’s microcosm of dysfunction is convincing for how it depicts an ongoing, even never-ending, struggle to define oneself.

Dialogue does most of the heavy-lifting here, just like in “Love”, the first and most recently released entry of Haugerud’s thematically related series. Haugerud’s knack for visual storytelling also makes a difference, specifically in how he presents the city of Oslo and its features as an enriching backdrop.

Sex is a curious movie, with a mix of moods and intentions that are, by turns, inviting and seriously off-putting.

When the movie stays more on subject, it can be engaging, and it helps that cinematographer Cecilie Semec has a talent for mining the mundane act of people talking to each other for visual interest.

Sex is earnest, but cerebral and challenging.