Céline Roustan
When Sara and her boyfriend join another couple on vacation at a Summer cottage, she finds herself in a tailspin after witnessing her friend’s intense orgasm and is left wondering if she’ll ever be able to have such a powerful experience. With an experimental and sensorial approach, writer/director Mattis Ohana Goksøyr explores insecurities and that feeling that the grass is greener on the other side, through Sara’s obsession. Under its sexually charged surface, Are You OK has an undeniable universality.
“Picture and sound told what we wanted and at the same time left more up to the audience’s interpretation”
Having previously made dialogue-driven dramas, Goksøyr confessed that his desire was to make a film that would “focus on the visual and the audiovisual aspects”. To my surprise, he also revealed that initially the film was supposed to have a voice-over (notoriously something I am not a fan of), but it disappeared in the edit when they realized that the “picture and sound told what we wanted and at the same time left more up to the audience’s interpretation”. This is actually what I like the most about this film, in addition to its striking visual flair, its subtlety allows each viewer to experience and process it in their own way.
Goksøyr also added that the film came to his mind in the midst of the pandemic, hoping to point out “how good we have it in the western world, even under covid isolation, and how easy it is to forget in an eternal rush for self-realization and maximization of life”. Managing to capture this sentiment in the woman’s obsessive quest for the same intensity in her orgasm is a clever move and one that displays the creativity and humor of the filmmaker.
“A long weekend at the summer cottage is experienced as a few short minutes as she chases her own elevated orgasm” – Goksoyr unravelling the narrative of Are You OK
Shot on Kodak 16mm, which inherently gives the film a very pleasant aesthetic, DP Håvard Byrkjeland carefully frames their shots, knowing that the storytelling would be visual. With every single frame of the film striking enough to be a standalone photo, this also reflects the quality of the production design by Maja Hyggen, the costume design by Alva Brosten and the grading by Sabina Törnberg. All of these elements combine to craft the captivating visual flair of the film, transporting and immersing you in the on-screen world and holding your gaze throughout the runtime of the film.
It’s the visual element of the film that takes us into Sara’s universe, but in order to really make the audience plunge into her inner turmoil it’s the sound design and the editing that trap us in her mind, taking us on the roller coaster journey that her brain is on. While editor Tormod Berge’s quick cuts make us experience the weekend at the same pace that she is processing it, the sound by Helge Bodøgaard and sound design by Andreas Waag Martinsen drives our attention towards how she is seeing and feeling her surroundings.
Are You OK hit the 2021 festival circuit ahead of its online premiere, with notable stops at Encounters and Winterthur. As the Winter begins, this film is a more than welcome escape to warmer temperatures, with its unexpected premise meaning it will linger in your mind long after the end credits.