In Ivar, the debut film by Norwegian filmmaker Markus Tangre, puppets are placed within a framework of everyday social realism. Anne notices a sudden change in her husband’s scent, and the night turns into a moment of self-questioning.
In Ivar, we enter the mind of a woman trapped in a long-term marriage. Her husband is no longer the man she fell in love with – or perhaps he has begun to reveal exactly what he always was, now that she has stopped idealizing him. An ordinary, even banal man, but now examined through the increasingly meticulous and unforgiving lens of a wife who can no longer stand him. And under that lens, the banal becomes something else – abominable, repulsive, hateful. Love has died, and passion has long been buried in the swamp of routines, silences, and, worst of all, the hideous little habits of a person once loved. She desires nothing less than to be struck by a burning passion, the kind that upends an entire life. But not with her husband. Meanwhile, he is perfectly happy, leading the easygoing life of a man who sincerely believes everything is fine. He drifts along, sluggish and content, completely unaware that, inside his own wife’s mind, he is brought to trial every night – judged, condemned, and duly executed. Between her fantasies of a longed-for rupture and the very real dryness of everyday life as a couple, a vast abyss opens up – one that is as uncomfortable as it is comical, filled with boredom and estrangement. The marriage drags on, stubbornly alive. (Jéssica Pestana)
