Joachim Trier made me go to Oslo

I don't think I had seen a Norweigian movie until The Worst Person In The World, part of Joachim Trier's Oslo trilogy. Part of it must have been that I saw it in 2021, when international travel was still mostly at a standstill, but I got it into my head that I needed to go to Oslo. The way he uses locations in his films makes you (you meaning Americans, or at least me personally as an American) want to immediately go to Norway and see if it looks and feels as magical as it does on screen.

In July of 2023 I decided to go on my first big solo trip, and got to visit Bergen and Oslo. Not to take away from Joachim Trier's talent, he's one of my favorite directors now, but I have the feeling that anywhere you aim a camera in Norway you're going to capture something beautiful. Last night I went to see an early Q&A screening of his new film Sentimental Value, or Affeksjonsverdi in Norwegian.

The house at the center of the film made me want to hop on a plane and go right back to Oslo, might be a good idea to wait until summer though.

photo courtesy of a Norwegian on Threads

According to the Thread, it's owned by rocker Lars Lillo-Stenberg and I suspect he's about to get visited by a bunch of film nerds like me after seeing the film. Looking at the map, it's pretty close to the hotel I stayed at (my all time fave btw) and I'm bummed I didn't happen to walk by it while I was there.

hotel bar at Sommerro

I could do a whole other post about how great this hotel was, but my favorite thing about it was it introduced me to contrast therapy (alternating cold plunge with hot sauna). Thankfully it has become trendy lately and there are places I can do it here in LA, but they don't look like this!

Even without a fancy hotel stay, the Oslo fjord has floating saunas right on the water, across from the Opera House, so you can get your contrast high the natural way.

There were lots of things I loved about visiting Oslo in the summer, things I suspected might be the case from watching Worst Person In The World, but wasn't sure.

1) The center of the city is heavily restricted to automobiles, so it's much quieter than other cities

2) You can easily walk pretty much anywhere in the city, whether you're following links to locations from Worst Person In the World, or even if you are a normal person who doesn't do that

3) It stays light until almost midnight in the summer so you can easily walk back from a bar after meeting a family of musicians who performed there at an open mic and were super friendly and their daughter challenged you to an arm wrestling session and pinned your arm in about 2 seconds

4) Rubarb soda, I need to start importing this stuff. It would kill in LA for sure.

5) There's more than one Munch version of The Scream, but you can just walk right up to the iconic one in the national museum. There's no Mona Lisa-esque line or protective glass or anything. If any art thieves are reading this blog, pretend I never said that.

6) Speaking of museum thieves, the coat rack is unattended and just on the honor system. Not a raincoat thief in sight.

7) You might run into your friend (aquaintance?) Lisa Ling outside the Opera House

8) There are houses that look like this right in the middle of the city. I didn't know cities were allowed to have adorable houses in them before Oslo. Joachim Trier sure did tho.

9) I figured out using context clues at the bookstore that "Best Sellers" are Ti På Topp in Norwegian.

10) The bookstore was, of course, the location of Julie's workplace in Worst Person In The World, and they had the appropriate signate to commemorate it.

11) Their bakeri game was legit

rhubarb bun from Apent Bakeri

12)

Their changing of the guard is really casual, it's just like, one woman named Ingrid.

13) The sculpture park is wild. One guy made 200 freaky sculptures.

14) Families don't seem to have the same hangups about nudity as many Americans. This girl's parents were laughing and taking pics as she held up this statue's bare ass.

15) The public parks look like this. Again, I've only been in the summer.

A big thank you to Joachim Trier for showing me how special Oslo is, and for making great, humanist cinema that speaks to people around the world.