Cold Lunch (2008) User Reviews

Pointless film

[korhanerel · 4/10 · 21 February 2009]

This film has no originality. It portrays people with problems which we have gotten used to seeing in many other films, including many from Norway, Denmark, Iceland... There is nothing special about their situation as far as film characters are concerned and these people are portrayed with little connection to their past, surroundings or friends. They are seemingly connected to each other by a series of events started by Christer's ego-centric behavior - which we understand is what drove his friends away from him.

The director apparently attempted to pay homage to Hitchcock's The Birds (which is signaled right at the beginning with a poster of the film hung on the wall of Christer's kitchen) but it fails miserably. The end, where we see Lina swimming in the rain, is very disappointing, despite Annie Lennox's beautiful voice.

Bad day in the city for the happy mystery lunch gang

[OJT · 7/10 · 22 April 2008]

I knew nothing about the film in beforehand, except it containing some sad everyday stories in a city day life. It starts off with a prologue with a boss drunk driving with an older employee, forcing her to take the blame when he kills a pedestrian during night in the city streets, with no spectators.

A great strange start, seemingly without any pointin the film, except telling us this is not a very happy story. And, it isn't. Lønsj (which means Lunch in English) is a title telling us about some everyday lives in a city (this being Oslo, but that's not significant). The international title of this film is Cold lunch.

We meet our three "stars" which is more like unhappy common every day humans struggling with things in their lives. One struggling with paying his rent, hating his work, being the reason for the second to have to leave home as a nervous wreck. The second having to leave her home of her father and go outside after having her neighbors killing her father after the "one" having caused a energy failure trying to steal a wash in their cellar. The third is a fresh mom realizing having started life with the wrong guy, actually not able to cope with his job, making her regret she ever met him.

This film awaits a culmination that's not coming. We're probably supposed to understand that life will go on for these sad figures, which all seem to have a very bad day. A day where the seagulls seem to have a bad warning to every one in the city, resembling Hitchcocks frightening "The Birds" in the bottom of their day. And it goes even worse, leaving it all up to your own imagination.

This film has very strong acting performances. You believe in the strange persons, but most viewers will hate that the story runs out in our own imaginations, without telling us what is the point. This is a risk taking the manuscript and the director obviously want us to be happy with. This is tough difficult for most to comprehend, and make the film difficult to love in the end.

The sad stories are though thought-provoking if you'd like them to be, and the bad day in their lives will make you find a smile on your lips if you'd like to see this as a comedy. Which it isn't. But laughing at the misery is the best you can do, hoping their bad day will go away.

The film offers no solutions, just questions. This is one of the films where you'll appreciate good acting, interesting starting plots and hating you have to use your imagination in the end.

Does the film function? I don't know for sure. A bad day in the city for sure. Will you learn something? Probably not. Except: Thank God this isn't a day in your life. Or is it...!? Be aware of the seagulls, though!

The Norwegian Magnolia

[MaxBorg89 · 7/10 · 9 November 2008]

As far as feature debuts go, Eva Sørhaug's is notable for its narrative and stylistic ambitions: merging the dry wit of Aki Kaurismäki with the multi-character storytelling of Paul Thomas Anderson, both taken out of their original contexts and placed in the gray everyday life of Oslo, capital city of Norway.

Unlike Magnolia or Short Cuts, Cold Lunch limits its focus on three characters: Leni (Ane Dahl Torp), an introverted girl who is faced with the grim reality of unemployment and financial needs when her father suddenly dies; Christer (Aksel Henne), a troubled teenager who struggles to pay his rent and has father issues; and Heidi (Pia Tjelta), a family mother who finds herself between her newborn baby and her abusive husband Odd (Kyrre Haugen Sydness), who either offends, beats or ignores her all the time.

The atmosphere is very Scandinavian, with a particular nod to the minimalistic humor present in Kaurismäki's work. On her own part, Sørhaug adds a winning chromatic contrast, emphasizing how the characters lead gray existences while living in white or red apartments. The slow pace, very understated acting and off-beat humor enable her to paint a conventional but entertaining portrait of today's society.

The real problem, ironically, comes when she tries to connect the dots (imagine Magnolia's frog rain with seagulls instead of frogs), as the film all of a sudden shifts to another genre and leads to one of the three plot strands ending in a rather disappointing way. But once the surrealistic digression is out of the way, Cold Lunch gets back on track and ends just like it started: quirky, oddly funny and occasionally moving.

Bird dropping effect

[kosmasp · 7/10 · 15 June 2021]

Wait wasn't that called the Butterfly effect? Maybe it's different in Europe some may say ... probably those who think of Europe as a big country with not a lot of differences. I reckon the same could be true of the nowadays more divided than united states of America ... but that's a different story - literally.

My train of thoughts sometimes really gets the best of me and there is almost no stopping me ... except taking away the keyboard. Please don't do that. But back to this, that has the lifes of a few people intermingled and intertwined. When one thing happens, that leads to another ... the ripple effect and all that. Or life ... things could be differently if ... yes and always. Sometimes we don't even know why or how we got into certain situations ... as a viewer we at least see a bigger picture here. I personally liked what the movie did, even if I don't understand all the characters .. but that's also life ... and different people being wired differently.

Compelling adult work

[doug-697 · 9/10 · 8 September 2008]

This is a tense Norwegian drama. It follows several average people and shows how their everyday lives intertwine in critical, but not extraordinary ways. You will be drawn into their lives, care about them, hate some of them, be endeared by some of them, but all the while you will worry about them and wonder where the movie is heading.

At times it plays like a Hitchcockian suspense, even including a scene reminiscent of The Birds. However, a good suspense film will build tension and then provide you with a grand finale, which provides a satisfactory release. Don't expect that here. There's no Cary Grant pulling Eva Marie Saint into an upper bunk, instead it mercilessly concludes with a scene of absolute horror.

The conclusion is unexpected, and key to explaining the film, because this final terrible act is caused by someone the movie has made you feel sympathetic towards and yet her carelessness is the most horrific of all. If you felt the movie was making any cliché'd moral statements such as "there's bad in all of us" or "all of us a capable of doing bad things" it dispels that here. The movie is saying something much more troubling: "we all do bad things every day".

It shows how much damage can be caused by simple human weakness we all possess. It isn't some drug-addicted, sociopath from a Dirty Harry movie who is murdering and raping. It's you and I. I don't recall seeing a movie more relentless in showing how badly we can hurt each other unless we are careful.

I saw this at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Like many Scandinavian films it's often on the stoic side; La Dolce Vita, it's not. But it is a compelling very adult work.