No Comment (Ingen kommentar) is the latest film by Petter Naess, best known for Elling (2001). It is a political satire about a case that everyone in Norway is familiar with. As elections approach, Prime Minister Alma Solvik (Laila Goody) becomes embroiled in a major scandal. Revelations emerge that, during her time in office, her husband, Sondre, engaged in stock market trades apparently based on confidential government information. What is there to do? Alma comes up with the idea to bring in a spin doctor, and not just anyone. She wants to enlist a college friend, Karianne (Pia Tjelta), whom she feels is the right person to handle the issue.
Her staff is very sceptical. When Alma says that they need her expertise, her colleague Levi retorts, “You mean, lying, manipulating, scamming, cheating, and raising hell across the board?” For the director, this is not obvious enough, so to make sure that everyone understands what kind of person Karianne is, she immediately “introduces herself” with the words, “Get used to having my arm up your ass for the next two weeks.” Hmm, maybe that is still not clear, so she adds, “Like a hand puppet”. For all of us who thought that Wag the Dog (1997) was as low as a professed satire could sink, No Comment seems to say “Hold my akevitt”.
A film worthy of No comment
For all Norwegians (and probably most Nordic individuals), the film is a transparently concealed version of the case of former Prime Minister Erna Solberg, whose husband, Sindre Finnes, engaged in insider trading. In the film, the protagonists are called Alma Solvik and Sondre. The feeling is that the screenwriter, Ståle Stein Berg, fed the names into some AI tool with the prompt, “Change the names slightly”. That actually goes for the entire script, which is so perfunctory that it hardly registers. Since it is a Norwegian film, it goes without saying that there are no discernible cinematic qualities visible. Some critics have claimed that Pia Tjelta’s performance as the spin doctor is strong, but she is more annoying than menacing.
No Comment premiered in Norwegian cinemas in August, but the Black Nights Film Festival decided to include the international premiere in its main competition. Even weirder was that it won the Best Script award. A mean person might ask what kind of stock trades were behind that decision. The film is bland to a fault, in both concept and execution.
