17/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: Malene Choi manages to say a lot in her new film – in very few words

Presented in the Berlinale’s Panorama, Malene Choi’s The Quiet Migration [+see also:
trailer
interview: Malene Choi
film profile] should emerge as one of the festival’s discoveries. A small discovery, mind you, as it’s as unassuming as a film can get, silently waiting in a corner for someone to notice it. A bit like its shy protagonist, Carl.

Carl (Cornelius Won Riedel-Clausen) is adopted. Nobody has to say it out loud, as it’s clear – in the Danish countryside where he lives with his parents, there is no one else who looks like him, not even a little. Actually, there is no one there, full stop, except for a Polish seasonal worker, happy to down some shots in the evenings. It’s hard to tell if Carl is really unhappy, but he is lonely and resigned, as if already waiting for that “go back to wherever you came from” line. Needless to say, it comes. It always does.

In her chat with Cineuropa, Korean-born Choi admitted that she talks about something she knows only too well here: that feeling of not belonging, to either South Korea or Denmark, of being the odd one out. Carl’s parents (Bjarne Henriksen and Bodil Jørgensen, seen recently in The Kingdom Exodus [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Asta Kamma August
interview: Hubert Toint and Mark Denes…
series profile]) are trying to be respectful, it seems, encouraging him to go and discover his birthplace. But they are also controlling, supervising his every move – after all, he is supposed to take over the family farm, even though he doesn’t seem to belong there either, poor thing, completely lost among those gigantic cows.

Choi finds plenty of humour in this tender story – Carl’s uneasiness and awkwardness are also damned funny. Surrounded by down-to-earth folks and Danish flags, he seems Photoshopped into her frames. No wonder he has to turn to imaginary companions for comfort, such as a girl who showed him some kindness once. Her phantom silhouette, sitting by the family table, gives him strength. Finally, there is someone else who resembles him, someone who – or so he assumes – understands everything he can’t talk about.

Social drama – or another take on “loneliness in the country”, so beloved by European festivals these days that it deserves its own section – morphs into something more poetic here, more mysterious. Carl keeps on daydreaming, escaping into his own head. No wonder he does – while there is love in this family, and good intentions, there are also secrets and a lack of transparency. In short, nobody opens up about anything, be it illness or grief. For as long as they can avoid it.

This silence, and the film’s slow pace, could prove testing for some. But it suits this isolated universe built on repetitive chores, as well as Carl’s peculiar state. He is not running anywhere either – he is stuck, like in those dreams where you just can’t move, no matter how hard you try or whatever is chasing you. Do you want to shake him sometimes, just to see him react? Absolutely. But you also want to give him a hug.

Choi co-wrote The Quiet Migration with Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. It was produced by Danish outfit Manna Film, and its sales are handled by TrustNordisk.