(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It is completely impossible to see Iskyss without the feminist in one being provoked. The starting point is namely one of the biggest spy scandals in Norwegian history where a blonde little woman fooled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for almost 30 years. Gunvor Galtung Haavik – whose story the film is based on – was a spy for the KGB and regularly provided classified information to the Russians. She was also active in the recruitment of other spies and received gifts from her Russian employers in the form of everything from money to expensive cultural experiences. She was recruited to the KGB in 1950 and revealed in Oslo 27 years later. At the time, she was an aging little lady who had met her KGB employer over 550 times.
Secret conditions
The question has always been: Why did she do this ?. Haavik herself died before she could explain herself, and only when journalist Alf R. Jacobsen began digging into the case in the nineties did an explanation emerge. The unmarried spy had fallen in love. During the war, she had a relationship with a young Russian prisoner of war, Vladimir Kozlov – a relationship she resumed when she became secretary and interpreter at the Norwegian embassy in Moscow after the war.
So the starting point for Knut Erik Jensen could hardly be better. This is a great piece of true drama that he could tell just as he saw it best. Then is it so incredibly sad that one comes out of the movie theater and wonders if Jensen has become blind? Or maybe he fell in love with it? Both in sticky instruments, gender stereotypes, classical music and long yearning looks.
Shy intimacy
An alleged love is nothing but a claim. Two beautiful faces that claim it in Russian make it no more credible. It is almost incredible that one should tell a film director that it is better to show than tell, for reading old and quite private, yes almost embarrassing, love letters is not a moving testimony. And when the film has lacquered an hour away in its fragmentary jump in time and space, and we finally get to see how these two actually fell for each other, it is loaded with intense music while loving so gently so gently.
I do not mean to claim that I know better how or why Gunvor – aka Vera – became a spy. But this film also gives us no good explanation, only a sweet-laden love story that is too typical to really capture the viewer. Vera – aka Ellen Dorrit Petersen – is too pretty. Vladimir Kozlov – aka Alexander Bukharov – has too sad eyes and, not least, such love and destiny is told better in films like Doctor Zhivago or in Reiner Fassbinder's Lili Marleen.
The latter in particular works well as a basis for comparison. For Fassbinders Willie is also a somewhat naive blonde who is only trying to get her singing career up and standing while the world is waging her around. But because of a stormy crush on a young Jewish man, she betrays her German people and helps smuggle Jews out of Nazi Germany. Unlike Jensen, Fassbinder shows off the exciting scenes that are a natural part of being a spy, but even better is that he also shows that Willie enjoys the luxury her singing career gives her.
Archaic woman image
For in his pursuit of poetic means and distance from chronology or other typical cinematic clues, Jensen has forgotten to introduce us to the man Vera. He only introduces us to an angel. A loving female angel, who again refers to an archaic image of women from romance, and who therefore does not grip us. Where is the flirtation with the KGB agents, where is the seduction – and then I'm not talking in the physical sense – of other agents, where is the fascination with the gifts she received? Where is the uncertainty for the next mission, the aggression over one's own situation? Why only the sweet memories? Why just soprano music and running in the snow after his beloved? Is this what Jensen thinks is the only thing Vera remembers at her deathbed? Does she not dare to look at other aspects of her life? Will everything we look back on in such a moment become rosy and beautiful? And if the answer should now be "yes" to this last question, then it is unfortunately the case that it will not necessarily be interesting for the rest of us who more or less voluntarily have to take part in these private memories.
