Art and Connection Between Women in Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Sex Love)
Review by In the Frame participant Erika Johanson
In the Frame is a program that fosters inquiry, reflection, and an appetite for cinema. As part of our In the Frame program, up to four emerging film critics had the opportunity to watch, reflect on and review films in the Perth Festival Lotterywest Films 2025 – 26 season.
Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Drømmer) comes in as part of his “Oslo Stories Trilogy”, alongside Love and Sex, a series of films dissimilar in narrative, but connected through the exploration of complex relationships, humanity and the difficult navigation of social norms in contemporary Norway. After winning the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, Dreams appeared early in the Perth Festival program this year, and it has stuck with me ever since I saw it.
The film follows a teenage girl named Johanne (Ella Øverbye), who becomes infatuated, or obsessed, with her French teacher, Johanna (Selome Emnetu). The forbidden nature of Johanne’s crush and the overwhelming feelings she experiences lead her to a period of depression before she bursts, showing up at Johanna’s apartment door in tears, marking the beginning of their private relationship. The passion that Johanne feels throughout this intimate relationship with her teacher drives her to write a memoir of sorts, documenting her feelings with a desperate need to confess, since she feels she cannot share it with anyone, as well as to capture these feelings before they dissipate and become just another memory – a creative outburst of love and desperation. In her writing, it becomes clear that Johanne has been harbouring an immense literary talent, and her text becomes the narration of the film, sharing the boundaries of cinema, literature and memory. It becomes clear that Haugerud was a novelist before making films, since the love and respect for the medium really shine through in Dreams.
Though it is unclear to the audience, and Johanne’s family, what exactly goes on between the two women during their time together, and whether the sexual and romantic descriptions in Johanne’s text are mere fantasy or literal memoir, hence the title “Dreams,” the level of intimacy is certainly not lost on us. When Johanne finally decides to share her work with her grandmother Karin (Anne Marit Jacobsen), a published poet and writer, her goal was not to impress her, but rather to get it off her chest, hoping that her Nan will not show it to her mother Kristen (Ane Dahl Torp). Of course, she does, both impressed and slightly concerned by Johanne’s work. This sparks a series of conversations between the two women, grandmother and mother, taking place on walks in the misty woods, over the phone, and in their homes, with the two questioning what action to take on Johanne’s part, but also questioning their own longing within sex and relationships as older, single women, and especially for Kristen as a writer, who was in awe of the skill and passion exhibited by her young granddaughter.
I was particularly struck by the weaving together and discussion of art, intimacy and knowledge in this film, especially in its centring of women, where male characters are not present until the end (and mostly inconsequential). It was beautiful and rare to see, and for these themes, it only makes sense. Though Dreams places a large emphasis on writing as an art form and a practice, and the possibilities for interpersonal connection and emotional exploration that it can nurture, the film also foregrounds some other forms of art in this way, namely, fibre arts.
Any knitters, crocheters, embroiderers, sewists, weavers, quilters or any other textile artists will usually have an eye for craftsmanship, particularly when watching films. I, for one, immediately noticed Johanna’s incredible collection of knit sweaters that she is seen wearing throughout the film. In fact, it is Johanna’s knitting skill that eventually draws Johanne to her, when Johanne realises she can learn to knit and ask Johanna for lessons to get closer to her.
Johanna’s apartment is bathed in warmth, charged with Johanne’s infatuation. The two sit together on the small couch covered with knitted blankets, by the decorative knit ceiling hangings and piles of yarn that Johanna keeps around under lamp-lit coziness. In contrast to the cold Norwegian winter and the harsh angles of the wealthy neighbourhood that Johanne navigates to make it to the apartment, Johanna’s place is the only place that glows like this in the film.
For millennia and across cultures, textile works were thought to be women’s work, bound up with caring for children and the family through the making and adjusting of garments to keep the family clothed, warm in winter and adorned for the right occasions. Even for wealthy or aged women throughout history, fibre arts served to keep the mind and hands busy when women were not permitted to read, write or engage in politics, hence the label of “grandma hobbies.” In fact, because of the functionality and necessity of textile works and their position within feminine domesticity, these types of pieces were not considered “art” up until very recently; and once clothing became mass-manufactured, these skills became reduced to hobbies, or crafts, particularly in the West.
Though many fibre artists today and throughout history would not identify their practice or their Sunday afternoon knitting circles as transgressively feminist, in fact, fibre arts are inextricable from women’s spaces and histories. Anni Albers, one of the most influential textile artists of the twentieth century, said in her book On Weaving that “along with cave paintings, threads were among the earliest transmitters of meaning.” Whether that be through literal visual communications like in tapestry works, or through the infusion of love and care into knitted pieces for one’s family, fibre arts have always conveyed meaning in some sense. That is why the presence of knitting in Dreams felt so poignant to me, where Johanna and Johanne can share a private space in which they share knowledge and communicate love (or at least some form of care) through this centuries-old practice. The tactile nature of the craft also lends power to the “forbidden love” part of the narrative, where Johanne cannot touch Johanna in the way that she wishes, but they can communicate through another form of using their hands to create meaning.
This idea also came to mind for me in Vermiglio, another film on the Perth Festival program exploring a family through generations of women in rural Italy during the Second World War. The setting of the home in that film felt so rich and lived in, with handmade curtains over the windows, crocheted doilies on the tables, every family member wearing a knitted beanie, scarf or sweater, mended linen sheets, and every baby born into a onesie embroidered with their names. The silent but crucial work of the women of the house folded into every corner.
The richness of these sets filled with hand-crafted textile pieces becomes more obvious once the work is stripped away. Towards the end of Dreams, when Johanna decides it’s time to end the intimate relationship with Johanne, the next time Johanne comes to her apartment during the day, the knitted décor has all been removed and replaced with nylon cord hangings, the blinds drawn wide open letting in the cold unfiltered sunlight, and Johanna is no longer wrapped in warm and colourful wool knits, but seen for the first time in harsher fabrics like denim and cotton canvas, feeling the cold shock once that love-infused warmth of dreams, of before, has gone away.
It felt so refreshing to watch a film like this, where women writing, reading, knitting, teaching, communicating and making art were represented with importance, respect and care.
Even Johanne’s complicated “first love” experience was viewed so empathetically by her mother and grandmother, not belittled or reduced to a juvenile obsession, but recognised as a valuable part of coming of age and understanding the world, especially with her processing of her experience through the art of writing. Though the film is not at all self-important or overly serious, the heavy moments are devastating, but in the most relatable, quotidian sense, the way we have all experienced before, and the only way to deal with it is to talk to your loved ones and make art.