Leef!

An intro to norwegian cinema lured me to this movie at the CIFF. 'Leef!" has won a bagfull of awards to its credit. Most of them are for the really cool script by Maria Goos.

'Live!' tells the story of Anna, a married woman, a midwife and a mother, who at this stage of her life decides to take up writing. She is married to Paul, an architect (who cheats on her regularly until a hilarious incident exposes him and gives him a jolt!) They have two grown-up daughters: Robin, 19, who is trying to find her way in life, rather immaturely in her parents’ opinion, and Isabelle, who is two years younger, and who receives a lot of attention (too much, in fact, for her liking) due to the heart condition from which she suffers. At her midwife practice Anna works with a male trainee/assistant, Gregor, a descendant of an Eastern European family of midwives. Around her busy life as a mother (in which Robin is a cause of great concern to her) and a midwife (a job that requires her to be constantly on call and always on the road), Anna tries to write the autobiographical story of the girl who accidentally kills the lover of her mother (the theatre diva Sybille) and of the woman who saves a boy from drowning. But when her home life descends into crisis again and husband Paul turns out to have a secret lover Jolande (his office secretary), Anna decides to put her ambitions of becoming a writer on hold for the time being, and puts down her pen.

The baseline of this amazing story tells you how important it is to live your life to the fullest extent, live your dreams, resist social pressures, stay true to yourself to become who you really are. Leef! is a fantastic movie that shows real problems and that is harrowing to see. Leef! is about people, it's a movie with a heart and it is really a must to see. Many different sub-plots in this story confluence in a very satisfying and breathtaking feel-good climax. Like for example the scene where Anna almost loses her daughter Isabelle when she was a baby in the process of rescuing a drowning boy; Isabelle goes ahead to develop a heart problem. The boy who was saved dies eventually in a car crash some years later. His heart is transplanted to Isabelle. Anna by saving the young boy, had actually saved her daughter!

It's really saddening that the director of such a wonderful film, Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen died two days prior to its premiere.