Vil du se min smukke navle? (1978)

 

Off-List: Vil du se min smukke navle?

The third off-List movie for 1978 is a blast from the past. At least from my past, it is. “Vil du se min smukke navle?” was the young love movie back in my childhood and although it was dated already when I became a teenager, this was still the reference point for the genre in Denmark.

Claus (Birger Larsen) is a shy and sensitive ninth-grader (which makes him around 15 years old) who has reached the age where girls are becoming very interesting. One particular girl, Lene (Lise-Lotte Rao), is flirting a bit with him and when the class is going on an outing to the Swedish forest for a week their relationship gets ample chance to develop.

This is not a movie with a lot of plot going one. Mostly we just follow these young people on the brink between childhood and maturity doing what they normally do on such trips. Claus is just as much hit by puberty as the other children and do not really know what to do about it. Lene is the adventurous one. When she looks at him and smiles, his world is all good, when her attention is elsewhere or she is goofing with the other boys, he withdraws into himself. They are clumsy, but when they are together everything is great.

It sounds silly and light, but the special quality of the movie is that it perfectly catches the weightlessness of that first love and the awkwardness it also causes. Where other movies distance themselves with comedy or ridiculing the youngsters, this movie takes them seriously and is very honest in its portrayal of them. I feel sympathy for Claus and Lene and I remember that confusion. When they finally have their romantic boat ride in the early morning, it feels as if it is all coming together in a way few movies manage.

“Vil du se min smukke navle” is also very much a product of its time. The immediate expression is very much 1978 with the notorious cloths, color scheme and hair cuts of the day, but also on a more profound level does it represent its time very well. It is the innocent time before the eighties, it is the great freedom after the hippie era and in this time they can find that remote place in a Swedish forest where the outside world does not exist.

The idea of school classes going on a cottage trip to socialize is quite an institution in Denmark (and may well be elsewhere as well) and while I can probably not claim they started with this movie, it has formed the mythological background for these trips. Consciously or unconsciously every generation since hope to find something out there like this class of ninth graders did.

Most of the cast were amateurs, which is not surprising given the age of the characters, and even for the director Søren Kragh-Jacobsen this was his first movie. There are moments where you can tell that this is not an expensive production, but it is far outweighed by the innocence and naturalism of the acting and presentation. Søren Kragh-Jacobsen would go on to become one of the best Danish directors with lot of movies under the belt and, surprisingly, so did Birger Larsen. He did not do much acting after this movie, instead he went into film production and eventually became a recognized director as well of both movies and television. Sadly, he died in 2016, just 54 years old.

I can highly recommend this movie, also to an international audience. There is something very universal about it that I think anybody who has been young and in love will recognize.