MOVIE REVIEW : ‘FAREWELL, ILLUSIONS’

“Farewell, Illusions” (Fox International, Venice) opens with two drunken men in their 40s staggering home in the dark of night. One laments that it’s too late to go to one more bar; the other replies, “It’s too late for everything.”

This remark sums up the sense of loss that permeates this fine Norwegian film focusing on two friends, fellow activists in the ‘60s, now middle-aged, successful but divorced and dissatisfied. The hawk-profiled Eigil (Knut Husebo) is a celebrated theater director in need of a sabbatical that he knows would cost him his prestigious position; the boyish-looking Atle (Svein Sturla Hungnes) is a chief pyschiatrist at a hospital plagued with insufficient funding to treat all who need help.

Co-writer-directors Svend Wam and Petter Vennerod catch us by surprise as the film widens in scope, becoming progressively surreal and dynamic as its scope widens. Just as we’re beginning to lament the film’s literalness, it gradually becomes a rich, ambitious and rewarding survey of the postwar generation and its disillusioned offspring.

Whereas “Farewell, Illusions” (Times-rated: Mature for adult themes, some sex and nudity) is the kind of film that gets better as its goes along, it has a handsome, unified look, thanks to cinematographer Philip Ogaard’s expressive, mood-setting images.