Thelma

The opening scene of "Thelma," Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier's latest film, is so quietly unnerving its effect spills over into the rest of the film, creating a hall of echoes. A father and his child walk across a frozen lake, tromping through snow-laden woods. He carries a rifle. When the father takes aim at a deer standing in the distance, the daughter is so riveted by the deer she is oblivious when her father turns to point the rifle at the back of her head.

The film jumps some years in the future. Thelma (Eili Harboe) is now a freshman in college, starting her life away from home. She is still tied to her over-protective parents, Trond (Henrik Rafaelsen) and wheelchair-bound Unni (Ellen Dorrit Petersen). They call her repeatedly if she doesn't answer her phone; they have memorized her class schedule; they ask her what she's cooking for dinner. She was raised a devout Christian, and her parents are concerned she may compromise her morals like so many young people do when they first leave home. But the anxieties unleashed in the prologue reverberate, even during the long stretches where the film takes the form of a tremulous sexual-awakening story. When Thelma confides in her father, her head resting wearily on his shoulder, the image of him pointing a rifle at her years earlier shivers around them like an afterimage. The sense of threat is palpable, but it's unclear what the threat is, and from which direction it comes.

Thelma, raised in isolation, wanders through the partying social atmosphere of college like a prim little wraith. Although she studies Biology, that most earthy of subjects, she appears so insubstantial that a breath of wind might blow her away. One day, while studying in the library, Anja (Kaya Wilkins) sits down next to her, and the two have a brief casual exchange. Moments later, Thelma is overcome by a seizure which leaves her writhing on the floor. She tells the doctor she doesn't have epilepsy as far as she knows. Later, Anja approaches her at the pool where Thelma does laps, asking if she's feeling better. To say that Thelma is "touched" doesn't come close to expressing the intensity of response. Thelma melts at the show of concern. Kindness is miraculous to Thelma. Even more miraculous, the beautiful and casually confident Anja includes Thelma in her group of friends, and Thelma does things she's never done before: dance in a nightclub, get a little drunk, not pick up when her parents call. Thelma is a sheltered girl, overwhelmed by her new freedoms and her sexual attraction to Anja ... but deeper than that, she is overwhelmed by feeling.

There's a lot going on in "Thelma," too much at times, with a number of familiar story-structures dovetailing in at different angles. Ultimately, it's the story of a strange submissive girl investigating the mystery of her own clouded-over past. It's also a coming-of-age story, compressed and thwarted by parental control via religion reminiscent of "Carrie" (the film owes a lot to "Carrie"). It is crystal clear that "coming out" to her parents would not be an option, so as Thelma falls head over heels in love/lust with Anja, her psychological situation deteriorates. The seizures get stronger, more violent. "Thelma" operates, too, like a thriller, or a horror film, filled with strange portents and seemingly supernatural phenomena. There are some truly spooky sequences. But its engine is the emotional awakening of an extremely repressed girl, a girl who finds emotions so stressful it ruptures the fabric of her reality.

Joachim Trier keeps the film firmly in Thelma's point of view. What she sees, we see. Because she is an unreliable and increasingly freaked-out narrator, it's never clear if what we are seeing is real or not. She has nightmares, although you wonder if they are flashbacks to her mysterious childhood. You remember, yet again, the look on her father's face when he turned the rifle on the back of her 8-year-old head. Is it just religious paranoia, or do her parents have a reason to be frightened of what she might do out there in the world?