Kitchen Stories (Film Review)

Written and directed by Bent Hamer, Kitchen Stories is a uniquely subtle comedy that substitutes awkward silences for extravagant punch lines and lends itself for analysis on a number of different levels. It is a peek across the snow-blurred boundaries of Norway and Sweden, of male and female, and of observer and the observed.

Set in the late 1940s, the plot is propelled by the nearly oppressive presence of the pseudo-scientific Home Research Institute, a post-war branch of Swedish inspiration designed to study the household habits of the common Scandinavian housewife. Boasting to have revolutionized kitchen space so that the average Nordic hausfrau need no longer walk to the Congo in a year of cooking (just to northern Italy), the Institute has turned its eye to studying the kitchen behaviors of the Norwegian bachelor.

A caravan of Swedish researchers, each equipped with a ridiculously tall observation chair and his own sleeping trailer, are assigned to peer into the lonely lives of the rural Landstad bachelors. Among them is Folke Nilson (Tomas Norstrom), a pale but pleasant Swede who is himself unattached, save for an elderly aunt who sends the occasional coveted jar of pickled Swedish fish.

Given instructions to observe, but not to consort with his reluctant “volunteer” Isak (Joachim Calmeyer) Folke discovers it is impossible to study his object without also being the object of study. Folke initially finds himself the victim of a dozen instances of passive defiance when the older Isak attempts to obstruct his researcher gaze by barring entrance into the house, by turning off the lights, and by stringing laundry across his visual pathway. He even goes so far as to drill a hole into the floor so that he can spy on the researcher below.

The Swede learns that in order to understand Isak’s habits, he must first establish contact by leaving his chair on stilts and descending into the human exchange of coffee, tobacco, and conversation. Soon Folke and Isak are fast friends, binging on bourbon and birthday cake as they laughingly transgress the boundary between observer and observed. More than once, the elder Isak is found asleep in the researcher’s chair, notebook at his side.

The film also draws our attention to the fine boundary between neutral observer and passive witness, poking fun at the Swedes for not taking a position during WWII. Hamer’s message is clear: no observer is neutral, no matter how high the chair. The alternative, implied when Isak rescues the sleeping Swede from probable doom on the railroad tracks, is concerned watchfulness.

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