This year, there are no Norwegian films with higher expectations than “Håndtering av udøde”. Party premiere at Colosseum Kino in Oslo with actors from the film; Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bente Børsum and Bjørn Sundquist……director Thea Hvistendahl had returned from the Sundance festival in the USA (where the film received an award for best music) and the Gothenburg film festival…… and others celebrities were thrilled. – An incredibly strong film made by a fantastic director with an enormously strong cast and a strong story, said Aksel Hennie to Se og Hør. One thing is that Renate Reinsve from “The World’s Worst Person” is back on the screen. Another thing is that this film looks special – and has required very special preparation. Which involves dead people. And behind all the creepy is a so far unknown director who is being praised to the skies. Electric awakening Her name is Thea Hvistendahl (35). HIGH EXPECTATIONS: “The best Norwegian feature film debut since ‘Reprise’?” wrote author Nikolaj Frobenius after seeing Thea Hvistendahl’s film. Photo: Nima Taheri / news We meet at a snow-covered Østre Gravlund in Oslo. Jeanette Gundersen from the funeral service takes us into the chapel. Thea has been here many times. She has pondered issues such as: What does a child look like, which has been in the grave for two weeks? Thea Hvistendahl moves like at home among the coffins in the cold room. Most are white, some tricolor, a few dark. NEXT LAST REST: A maximum of ten working days must elapse between death and burial or cremation, according to the Graveyards Act. Photo: Nima Taheri / news – The first few times it’s a bit strange, you kind of whisper out of respect. But I have been to such places a lot, she says. Thea has thoroughly familiarized herself with decay and practical work with corpses to make her first feature film. Thea Hvistendahl Educated at Westerdals School of Communication, with a bachelor’s degree in directing for film and TV (2013). Has worked with music videos, short films and advertising. Also made the concert cinema film “Adjø Montebello” with Karpe (2017). It was nominated for four Amanda awards. Has made the short films Virgins4Lyfe (2018) and Satan’s children (2019). In the film, we follow three families. Everyone gets back a member who has passed away. During a heat wave in Oslo, a gigantic electric shock occurs which causes dead people to wake up. “Handling the undead” premiered at the Sundance festival in the USA and opened the film festival in Gothenburg, to very good reception. On February 9, it comes to cinemas in Norway. How did a fresh-faced director get Norway’s biggest film star to star in a zombie film? “A zombie film with Renate Reinsve” It was enough to send her the manuscript. – It was so heartbreaking. I was excited about how recording those scenes would affect me, says Renate Reinsve. FRELST: – I knew as soon as I read the script that I wanted the role of Anna, says Renate Reinsve. Photo: Kamilla Marie Johnsen / news Already when she was preparing for the audition, she realized that this was going to be difficult. The character Anna has experienced the loss of her child and eventually has to make a brutal choice. It’s the first time the world will see Renate Reinsve on the big screen again, after the Cannes award-winning role in 2021. (You remember “The World’s Worst Person”? Oscar nomination, worldwide success, prize in Cannes for the first Norwegian actor ever?) Renate and Anders Danielsen Lie are both in this film as well. They brag about director Thea. – She is uncompromising and brave, I trusted her a lot. She is also one of the kindest people I know, says Renate Reinsve. FEW WORDS, A LOT OF PAIN: Renate had to take being in grief seriously. – I got very tired. The body believes what you go through, she says. Photo: Pål Ulvik Rokseth / EINAR FILM It takes a long time to make feature films. Director Thea Hvistendahl had actually selected Renate and Anders before all the commotion in 2021, it turns out. That her film is referred to as “the one with Renate Reinsve” is just fun, director Thea thinks. However, she is a little afraid of the term “zombie film”. – It is magical realism more than horror, she believes. – It was a very nice set to be on, says Renate Reinsve. Here with Bjørn Sundquist, who plays her father in the film. Thea and Bjørn during the recording of the film’s cabin tour. It does not go unproblematically. It takes a lot of tinkering to create a believable, resurrected drowned person. Make-up artist/effects designer Morten Jacobsen works on the undead played by Anders Dybwad. Handling zombie hands. But still. We get to see dead people walking on two legs in this story. If it’s not a zombie movie, what is? The summer with zombies in the water “Handling the undead” is based on a novel written by Swedish John Ajvide Lindquist. The film adaptation of his book “Let the right person come in” was a mega-success. It has been named the second best vampire film of all time by the film website Rotten Tomatoes. Thea had not made a single feature film before, but gained full confidence from John. John Ajvide Lindqvist Swedish author, known for novels and short stories in the horror genre. Got a big breakthrough with the debut book “Let the right one come in” in 2004. It’s about bullying victim Oskar and vampire Eli who move into the same block. John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of “Let the right person come in”, which won several international awards. “Handling the undead” is his second book, published in 2005. Bir called “the Swedish king of horrors”. – I liked her aesthetics, the sensitive film language, says John, who had seen previous short films. The story he wrote about the undead over 20 years ago began when John had to fight to see his dead dad. He had drowned and hit a boat propeller. The body was badly dressed, as is said. – “You do NOT want to see”; that’s what they said, time and time again. It is strange, the enormous reluctance to see the dead. John won in the end. He needed to see, to accept that father was dead. But then the brain started spinning further. – That summer I didn’t dare swim, I saw zombies in the water. IN THE CHAPEL: John and Thea got to know each other well through the work on the script. He also got to choose a small role in the film: Rabbit seller or undertaker? – It became a funeral agent, of course. Photo: Privat Not everything from the book has made it into the film. But a special boy can be found both in John’s book and in Thea’s film. He that the grandfather digs up, the strange night when the dead wake up. The two-week-old corpse Thea can explain how to dress a corpse. She knows how long it takes for the corpse stains to appear (about half an hour), for the body to become stiff (two hours), and then soft again, when the decay starts (it depends on the temperature). Creating the undead (who just died) was a lot about not making them too different. STILL IN THE HOSPITAL COAT: Just hours after the car accident that kills her, she is back on her feet. Actor is Bahar Pars. Photo: Pål Ulvik Rokseth / EINAR FILM – In the make-up we said “no, that will be too zombie”. The scariest thing to see are the dead who are as similar as possible to normal humans, says Thea. COLOR CORRECTED: The day after the ceremony in the chapel at Østre Gravlund, the elderly couple are reunited. Here, the skin tone was corrected in post-production. Actors are Bente Børsum (live, TV) and Olga Damani. Photo: Pål Ulvik Rokseth / EINAR FILM But then there was the boy. It was more difficult. We have wandered around the chapel and the cold room for quite some time now. It happens that those who work here have to move a cemetery, but it has never happened after just two weeks. What does a human body look like after fourteen days in the earth? Thea spoke to undertakers and pathologists. There was a lot of professional discussion, searching in reference books and searching for images on the internet. In the end, together with a make-up artist and doll maker, she managed to create the boy. He is played partly by a child with make-up and special effects, and partly by a puppet. The result is a mildly disturbing pale and slightly broken child. NOT COMPLETELY WELL: Elias has been helped by grandfather (Bjørn Sundquist) to get out of the grave and go home to bed. Photo: Pål Ulvik Rokseth / EINAR FILM But think for yourself: In the choice between never seeing your child again – or getting back a slightly crumbled version – what would you have taken? The dead son Elias is suddenly lying in his bed when Anna (Renate Reinsve) comes home from the night shift. When Renate panicked According to the script, Anna was actually supposed to be confused and a little repulsed when meeting her resurrected son. – But that doll was so well made, I got a real reaction. It felt like I was panicking, says Renate Reinsve. – It became very real for me. The first take was included in the film. SHOCKED: Renate didn’t want to see the doll representing the resurrected son until the actual scene was shot. She herself has a son of kindergarten age. Photo: Pål Ulvik Rokseth / EINAR FILM Anna is jolted out of a coma-like state of grief when she has to deal with the undead boy. Perhaps she would not have been able to accept her son’s death without this shock. – Through the very painful experience of seeing him when he is not alive and not dead, she finally manages to realize that he is no longer there, says Renate. – What I think was so beautiful about the role is that even in the very big events and bad things in life, the feelings can be hidden from us. The struggle to get through those feelings is fundamental. As her co-star Bjørn Sundquist said time and time again during the recording: “It’s really about dealing with grief, this here.” Coming to terms with the impossible – I feel like the undead are “here comes grief” and then they have to face it face to face. And then it becomes very concrete that they can eat you up, says Thea. Her ambition has been to address a crisis that at some point affects us all: losing someone we love. Of everything she has learned about grief work, the most important thing she wants to highlight is acceptance. Death is coming to terms with the impossible: You can’t get that human back. – Until you manage to understand it, the grief continues in an extra difficult way, says Thea. AFTER THE FUNERAL: Thea has immersed herself in death and grief in recent years, but has also known a lot about gratitude. – It is a film about love. That’s what I hope people will take away. Photo: Nima Taheri / news Although she was not particularly knowledgeable about death or losing someone before the film project started, she was not too afraid of these things either. Along the way, something happened that changed Thea’s own relationship with death. Namely that she herself gave birth to a son. – Now I have much less desire to die. But practically what happens when that day comes, Thea Hvistendahl knows that well. Playing with death – and vice versa – I’ve become so familiar with decay and all that stuff that I stopped thinking about it. I can catch myself saying something macabre and then laugh about it, nothing is disgusting or strange anymore, says Thea. A green tractor plowed between the headstones at Østre Gravlund while we were chatting inside. The snow has to go, so the ground can be thawed to dig a new grave. Later this week, a teenager will have his final resting place here. DARKNESS AND LIGHT: – It feels banal when I say it, but there is also something magical about the world moving on. Even when you experience something absolutely terrible, says Thea. Photo: Nima Taheri / news The Funeral Service’s Jeanette Gundersen and film director Thea agree that we talk too little about death. But this that the film addresses, that people come back, go again? A little surprisingly, the funeral agency’s woman is completely open to the fact that things … can happen. Near death. A colleague is said to have experienced being stroked down the arm. Apparently alone in the chapel. And since the keys were constantly missing from Østre Gravlund’s own electric car, Jeanette has started always taking them with her. – People can believe what they want, but I’m not alone when I walk around here in the morning, says Jeanette Gundersen. Hey Hey! Do you have thoughts about what you have read, or tips for other stories? Please send me an email. Have a nice day! More footage? You’re welcome.
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“Handling the undead” with Renate Reinsve is a zombie film about love and loss – Culture
