Let Go

Stella and her husband are trying to get back into the life of their fifteen-year-old daughter Hanna. The girl has built a wall and cares about nothing but jump rope. They decide to travel to Berlin as a family for a competition she wants to enter. The trip fixes nobody. The film is not interested in teenage rebellion. It is interested in a family noticing its own inattention: the parents say they want to understand Hanna, and both are busy with their own concerns, and the film does not forgive that. The form is Scandinavian family comedy: cold humour, silent car scenes, short and direct dialogue. The funny moments always end in embarrassment. Josephine Bornebusch wrote, directed and played the mother. She was known in Sweden for television, and this counts as her most personal work in film. It was released on Netflix. Pål Sverre Hagen plays the father and Sigrid Johnson the daughter. Who it is for: viewers who like Scandinavian films that treat family tension with humour. Who it is not for: anyone expecting resolution. The film solves nothing and some of its characters are left unopened.