Elling
Elling ★★½ 2001 (R)
Witty, gentle comedy has two Noregian misfits, recently released from a mental institution, living together in a government-subsidized Oslo flat in order to learn how to live in the outside world. Elling, who had to be dragged from his mother's home when she died, is extremely agoraphobic, fastidious, and socially inept. His roomie Kjell Bjarne is a hulking man with no sense of personal hygiene and an overdeveloped sexual imagination. Their friendship helps them to slowly and amusingly adapt to, and enter, the world. This allows Kjell to befriend, and become romantic with, their pregnant upstairs neighbor, while Elling writes poetry (and slips it into saurkraut packages at the market), finally attends a reading, and meets fellow poet Alfons. Sentimental without being cloying. 89m/C VHS, DVD . NO Per Christian Ellefsen, Sven Nordin, Marit Pia Jacobsen, Jorgen Langhelle, Per Christensen; D: Petter Naess; W: Axel Hellstenius; C: Svein Krovel; M: Lars Lillo Stenberg.