Building the New Queer Canon is a monthly column exploring a new or rediscovered LGBTQIA+ film, and whether it deserves inclusion in an ever-growing “canon” of queer cinema. VV’s Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy essay contains spoilers. Dag Johan Haugerud’s 2024 film series features Thorbjørn Harr, Andrea Bræin Hovig and Ella Øverbye. Check out more movie coverage in the film essays section.

Queer narrative cinema is more comfortable than ever in rejecting labels for its characters, embracing a fluidity in sexuality rather than forcing them into strict boxes. It’s not a new development, but it’s newly emblematic of a generational shift amongst Gen-Z and younger Millennials, where the term “queer” can signify alternative sexualities without any definitive reading. What is most immediately apparent about Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy is how he applies that same fluidity to stereotypically heteronormative contexts, refraining from cheap jokes at the expense of other sexualities to make three-character dramas that all feel attuned to our current moment. The common thread between these disparate stories, aside from taking place in different corners of Oslo, is that they all prominently feature nominally heterosexual characters confronting a sudden sense of queer desire, or a need for the kind of no-strings intimacy which comes far more casual to a demographic plugged into Grindr.

All three films play with fire, their narratives all oriented around subject matter which could feel scandalous in another filmmaker’s hands. The first movie, Sex (2024), is about a straight man engaging in a homosexual tryst that threatens to destroy his conventional family unit; a set-up that would be equally at home in a hand-wringing conservative lecture. The centerpiece, Dreams (Sex Love) (2024), is about a teenage girl’s romantic infatuation with a schoolteacher, and Haugerud leaves it deliberately ambiguous as to whether she’s completely oblivious or encouraging her adolescent crush with extra attention. That Todd Haynes, fresh off May December (2023), was the president of the Berlin jury that awarded it the Golden Bear sounds like a fitting match between filmmaker and the themes which intrigue them, until one sees the film and finds something far more tender about formative teenage romances — not a scandalous age-gap relationship satire. The closing chapter, Love (204), is the least liable to offend while being the only installment which depicts sex with a directness beyond blunt conversations. As with the respective films by Michael Haneke (Amour, 2012) or Gaspar Noé (Love, 2015), Haugerud’s title reads as ironic until one realizes that this is as earnest and affectionate that the filmmaker can be without softening their edges or over-sentimentalizing.

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It’s less of a shock with Love considering that sincerity is in full display right off the bat with Sex, the weakest film of the trilogy but the boldest when it comes to translating the queer experience to humdrum hetero life. Following two chimney sweeps, a boss (Thorbjørn Harr) and one of his employees (Jan Gunnar Røise), the drama opens with an extensive monologue from the senior figure recounting a recurring dream in which David Bowie looks at him like he was a woman — a gesture which he’s trying to unpack, as he’s comfortable within his assigned gender, and hasn’t had any conscious desires that could be projected onto this. The two men discuss this with open minds — these are not the “anti-woke” figures the media insists on telling us that white middle-aged men exclusively are — but quickly stumble onto an ethical concern when the employee mentions having his first same-sex hookup while at a client’s house the day before. The director doesn’t treat this as a joke, but the eventual revelation that both characters are aware that he has a wife and kid, and that they disagree on whether this constitutes as cheating, certainly is.

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One could argue that there’s a timidness on behalf of the director considering the questionable hook-up which sets the narrative in motion isn’t depicted, only discussed in clinical terms. In fact, the trilogy’s only graphic sex scenes are between two members of opposing sexes — a creative decision which would feel questionable were those not framed from a distinct remove. In being open about their emotions and queer desires, the rest of Haugerud’s central characters are shown at complete ease with their sexualities to the extent that the acts themselves are less relevant than how they verbalize the emotions which led them there. 

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Sex is a morality play of sorts, debating the ethics of sleeping with a man while in a monogamous relationship with a woman, but one which never gets close to moralizing about straight men experimenting with their sexual or gender expression. It’s liberated in ways that its characters struggle to be; a story that is likely a disaster in another filmmaker’s hands, and one that succeeds because it never teeters towards the bawdy sexploitation visible in its premise. Sex is also the least interesting film because every other conversation is a face-value discussion of the ethics of the situation, making the arguments on behalf of each perspective instead of leaving that to the audience’s post-viewing debates. It’s almost too tasteful with regard to its charged material.

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In the second film in the trilogy, Dreams (Sex Love), the only exploitation onscreen comes courtesy of the protagonist Johanne’s (Ella Øverbye) mother, who believes that her diaries — in which she writes at length about her unrequited crush on one of her teachers — should be published as they could help millions of teens grapple with their own identities. The girl’s response to having such intimate thoughts published still manages to catch her mother off guard; despite writing dozens of pages about her romantic desire for an older woman, Johanne is baffled to hear her mom characterize it as a story of “queer awakening.” She’s reluctantly frank when speaking about her experiences after her grandmother let her mother read what she’d written, despite her protestations, but this is the main sticking point — a definitive label is now being enforced upon her, even as she regarded the events as a disruptive anomaly in her life.

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But this is exactly why queerness has such wide parameters, reflecting a sexuality beyond binary interests even if in the public imagination it is often still interpreted as an alternative for “gay.” Haugerud, a 60-year-old filmmaker, appears to share this perspective, which is why his movies are at ease with leaving its characters’ desires open to interpretation. Dreams (Sex Love) isn’t a story strictly about a lesbian awakening, ending on a deliberately ambiguous note about Johanne’s future romantic prospects rather than a definitive coming out. She may not define herself by the label which best describes her fluid sexuality, and Haugerud manages to respect this while making it clear that she has gone through something she will eventually concede has shaped her identity.

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The final film, Love, follows the friendship between two nurses at an Oslo hospital: Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and her younger gay colleague Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen). Unlike the other films, this isn’t a tale of an unassuming person exploring newfound frontiers of their sexuality, but rather a philosophical reversal of the stereotypical ways we are told straight and queer people explore sex and romance. The pair bump into each other one evening on the ferry that connects the Oslo suburbs, with Tor revealing that he often travels late at night to cruise on Grindr, enjoying the conversations with men even if it inevitably doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s a frank revelation which proves eye opening for Marianne, who wonders whether her societal status as a middle-aged single woman means she must suffer through dates that go nowhere at the expense of rekindling some semblance of sexual pleasure. 

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One-night stands are hardly exclusive to queer communities, but the concept of cruising or trawling through apps deliberately tailored towards finding them are often discussed as if they are activities straight people don’t indulge in. It’s an under-explored aspect of contemporary heterosexual life as portrayed in popular culture, and Marianne’s experiences are most noteworthy for breaking any allusions that there’s somehow a difference. Sex opens the trilogy by having its protagonist frame another man by bluntly asking him to hook up as a novelty — a cultural difference one wouldn’t get between opposite sexes, and an idea that is smashed to pieces by the trilogy’s close. This is juxtaposed by Tor’s attraction towards Bjørn (Lars Jacob Holm), an older man he strikes up a conversation with on the ferry, who he later learns is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. 

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Having initially met Bjørn outside a medical, professional context, Tor struggles to separate him from his personal life, offering to become his live-in carer, and eventually finds his own notions of the importance of sex within a relationship shattered. One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, but (as Tor outlines), it’s rarely spoken about how this disproportionately affects the sex lives of gay men, who will struggle with penetrative sex in both bottoming and topping. Discovering that Bjørn already has an inactive sex life — he came of age during the AIDS crisis, and the idea of sex has long caused him anxiety — inspires something in Tor, which doesn’t feel specifically romantic or sexual, even though those impulses are there. He isn’t someone who struggles to find connections, even if it’s just fleeting conversations on a ferry, so he appears to be discovering a more protective side of himself after meeting somebody who has been both sheltered and shut out of those same experiences.

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The title of the film is Love, and yet the form that emotion takes  doesn’t strike me as exclusively romantic; Tor’s affection could easily be read as that of a friend not wanting someone else to die without a satisfying moment of intimacy, or of a man who came of age at a time of queer acceptance who wants to extend kinship towards someone less fortunate. Like Haneke’s Amour, Love couldn’t be considered a conventionally romantic film, but it’s about the ultimate test of the endurance of that emotion — caring for someone so deeply that you’ll remain by their side, even if it’s painful seeing them waste away. Haugerud is far more sparing to his audience than the Austrian provocateur at his most gentle, but he also shares a belief that this is the ultimate sign of enduring love, one which transcends sexuality or gender. 

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Bjørn is the most pivotal character to appear in all three films — outside of Love, he’s most prominently featured as Johanne’s psychiatrist in Dreams, albeit unnamed — but it’s the section of the narrative in which he doesn’t appear which I feel offers the strongest thematic tie between the trilogy. Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), Marianne’s best friend, is a strong believer in sexual openness, and yet she takes a judgmental tone when her own single friend eschews dating to find something more casual. This side character will talk at length about her city’s openness and acceptance, and she is shocked to find herself having a more reactionary opinion when someone in her life affords herself that same freedom, subconsciously bitter that she’s not following the romantic path society expects of her.

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Whether it’s being more sexually adventurous or emotionally open to romantic experiences which don’t correlate to their own sexuality, each installment of Haugerud’s 2024 film series is about characters rediscovering themselves beyond arbitrary labels, even going so far as to challenge many queer perceptions of sexual relationships — both romantic and transactional — in the process. Gradually, the Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy redefines queerness as a process of self-discovery which can always evolve, rather than an ill-fitting label you’re stuck with after a single formative experience.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) is a film and TV critic based in Manchester, England. By day, he interviews the great and the good of the film world for Zavvi, and by night, he criticizes their work as a regular reviewer at outlets including The Film Stage and Looper. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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