Thelma

Imagine Brian De Palma’s lurid, over-the-top adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie recast in a cool, cerebral Scandinavian style and you will have some idea of what Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier’s film is like. Thelma (Eili Harboe) is a lonely college freshman whose doctor father (Henrik Rafaelsen) and wheelchair-bound mother (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) keep close tabs on her by phone. The couple have raised their daughter in a strict Christian environment, and are concerned she might stray from the path of righteousness—a fear that appears to be justified when she becomes physically attracted to classmate Anja (Kaya Wilkins), a beautiful extrovert who returns her interest and introduces her to a coterie of secular friends. Thelma begins suffering from violent seizures that she initially assumes are epileptic, but a battery of medical tests prove inconclusive and she later learns that she has telekinetic powers. And she exhibited them with such tragic results in her childhood that her father actually considered killing her. Now, he might still decide to take strong action. Along the way, Trier serves up a series of chilling set-pieces—an opening flashback on a frozen lake, a frightening scene in a swimming pool, an eerie episode at an opera house, etc.—in this film that (like Carrie) is not terribly strong on logic, but in its chilly Nordic way creates an atmosphere that is persistently, and pleasurably, unsettling. Recommended. (F. Swietek)