Hurry slowly

With his debut feature, director Anders Emblem from Ålesund on the west coast of Norway has been invited to numerous film festivals around the world, like the indie showcase Slamdance in the US. Technically speaking, Hurry Slowly is a student film; however, it is something far more than just an exercise. It is an astoundingly wise and stylish narrative with deep roots at its own location, and island just off the coast of Ålesund.

Siblings Tom and Fiona live on this island, in a large white house with a pleasant garden, and startlingly pedagogical, visual posters and messages on walls and doors throughout the entire house. Tom is autistic. He is a creature of habit, with sparse verbal communication skills and needing constant care. Fiona is his legal guardian. She works aboard the local ferry, and is passionately into music. With Tom’s 18^th birthday approaching, there is a real possibility of finding him a place at a facility in the city.

Hurry Slowly has very little dialogue. Instead, it uses locations, movements, and little gestures to create a visual map of Tom’s and Fiona’s feelings, without explaining it outright. As such, the film is close in spirit to the works of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch – at their most trivial and unpretentious.