Fjord – 8

Norway’s fjords are glorious, but its conforming culture not so much, at least in the vision of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu. Sebastian Stan and the redoubtable Renate Reinsve are spectacularly human in their roles as a religiously conservative mixed-nationality couple newly arrived in Smalltown, Norway. My first reaction was relief that I don’t have five children before the smug child-services ladies brought on bigger problems. One key plot point was missing–why did no one explain what caused the controversial bruising?–but that didn’t stop my stomach from churning for the entire last half of the film. (Any concern that the basic plot was farfetched was eliminated by Pete Buttigieg’s ordeal from this summer.)