Kitchen Stories Bent Hamer Norway/Sweden 2003
A convoy of drab green caravans cross the Swedish-Norwegian frontier and all change lanes in sharp precision. Sweden and Norway drive on different sides of the road and this simple difference in procedure underpins Kitchen Stories. As a portent of events to come, this is enough to reduce the head of the convoy to nausea. It is the 1950’s and the gleaming application of science can still improve the world with boundless optimism. Perhaps even the wintry domestic realm of the Norwegian bachelor can be improved.
Swedish Researcher, Folke (Tomas Norström) is allocated Norwegian farmer Isak (Joachim Calmeyer) to observe. After spending the first few days locked outside, Folke is finally given access to the house where he erects his regulation high chair (to provide an overview of the environment) and finally starts to compile the raw data of Isak’s movements. Except that Isak reacts badly and stops using his kitchen, resorting to cooking upstairs, spying on Folke and recording his movements. A petty battle of wills ensues, using domestic armaments such as light switches, chocolate and dripping taps.
Kitchen Stories is a bone-dry odd couple comedy grounded in the real life endeavours of the Swedish Home Research Institute. An organisation dedicated to reducing the burden of domestic labour upon the average homemaker, the institute calculated that the standard housewife travelled a distance equivalent to that between Sweden and the Congo each year. After intense research the Institute’s previous recommendations managed to reduce that burden to Milan. The next step was to study that singularly irascible breed, the single Norwegian male.
Despite the Swedish Home Research Institute’s bold claims of efficiency throughout Kitchen Stories’ opening titles, a shot of a housewife vacuuming under heavy observation in dingy light hardly instils confidence in the Institute’s utopian ideals. Crippled beneath the weight of a bulky respirator the subject looks hideously like a beetle, scourge of a well-run kitchen. Later, the researchers scuttling to and from their regulation green caravans also hint at this insectile nature of their national psyche. Diverting from the bureaucratic otherworldliness of the premise, the Norwegian subjects are all clearly recognised individuals with a cavalier attitude to efficiency summarised notably by the doctor who conducts a chest examination whilst dragging on a cigarette. Gradually the gap between researchers and subjects falls into disarray as the Swedish researchers succumb to their charm.
Brent Hamer’s debut picture, Kitchen Stories, is a curiously charming hypothesis well worth observing.
