Frelle Petersen’s quiet Berlinale feature shows yet another health care worker struggling with a fraught system
In many aspects Frelle Petersen’s downbeat depiction about the systemic challenges of an overworked nurse seems like a companion piece to Petra Volpe’s hospital drama Late Shift. Both films had their recent premiere at Berlinale, Volpe in the Special section and Petersen in Panorama. Both center young women in the medical care profession. But whereas Volpe’s film watches a medical nurse at a busy Swiss city hospital, the Danish director focuses on a health assistant who looks after people in the privacy of their own homes. Both protagonists are single mothers and share custody for a daughter. However, unlike Volpe, Petersen actually gives his main character Sofie (his regular actor Jette Søndergaard) screen time with her daughter Clara (Mimi Bræmer Dueholm).
The 10-year-old girl is visibly frustrated about her mothers short attention span. Sophie in turn painfully feels her daughter slip away but doesn’t have the capacity to do much about it. Just like Volpe’s film character, she is deeply invested in her work and seriously concerned about the wellbeing of the exclusively elderly people she visits week after week. The psychologically disparate but socially uniform group of middle-class senior citizens provide the subdued scenario’s emotional backdrop. Some of them are portrayed by veteran actors, others by nonprofessionals from the film’s small town setting. Nevertheless, their performances are equally heartfelt and add a level of humanist authenticity to the somewhat formulaic story.
Sophie starts out at her job full of commitment but soon becomes disillusioned with the unfeeling mechanism of a largely economically driven care system. The most striking connection between Volpe’s and Petersen’s stories are the alarming conditions which they reveal within the health care sector. A tight timetable hardly allows Sophie to do the bare minimum for each client. Every kind word or helpful errand – finding the frames for photographs of grandchildren who never visit or changing the batteries in an old clock that never quite works – makes her run late on her shift. The few minutes reserved for each visit are only calculated for basic physical needs and don’t consider the psychological and emotional support that proofs equally, if not more, important.
For many patients, Sophie and the other home carers provide the only remaining social interaction. Rather than providing grand drama, Petersen looks for the small moments of human connection or distancing. Subtle signs of personal resignation, a tired glance or tender gesture speak more eloquently than elaborate conversations. Even Sophie’s boss is stuck in a larger system of mismanagement. “I have to take whom I can get”, she rebukes Sophie’s complaint about a colleague’s neglect of his clients. It’s a rare moment of tension in an utterly restrained work. The lack of psychological exploration, the muted color palette and slow pace can feel exhausting. But maybe that is the point.
- OT: Hjem kaere hjem
- Director: Frelle Petersen
- Screenplay: Frelle Petersen
- Year: 2025
- Distribution | Production © TrustNordisk
