The Hypnosis

Vera and André are lovers and business partners. They have built an app for women's health and have been accepted onto a large investment programme. The pitch is tomorrow. Vera goes to a hypnotist to stop smoking. Something changes after the session: she no longer holds herself back. She says whatever comes to her, makes improper jokes at dinner, goes off the script during the pitch. André panics. He tries to save the presentation and every intervention makes it larger. Everyone around them goes on being courteous and nobody asks what is happening. Ernst De Geer directs; he wrote the screenplay with Mads Stegger and it is his first feature. Asta Kamma August plays Vera and Herbert Nordrum plays André. It is a Swedish and Norwegian co-production. The film had its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on 4 July 2023. It won the FIPRESCI award in the main competition and the Europa Cinemas Label there, and Herbert Nordrum was named best actor. It reached Swedish cinemas on 8 March 2024. The matter it treats is the language of start-up culture; the pitch, the personal story and the sale have become the same thing. The humour rests on discomfort; nobody shouts and the tension stays inside the politeness. The narrative leaves it unsettled whether Vera was really affected by the hypnosis. The film also takes on the loss of the line between a relationship and a business. Its limit is tone; the discomfort is constant, the humour cold, and the ending unresolved. Who it is for: viewers who like Scandinavian satire and comedy of embarrassment. Who it is not for: it is uncomfortable, cold, and the ending gives no closure.