Liebe am Fjord - Zwei Sommer (2013)

Johanna Claesen and Sigrun Birksen have been friends since childhood. Although they have not seen each other for many years, they have never lost touch. Johanna’s marriage has since fallen apart, and she has returned to her hometown, where she has taken over the post office, which had been vacant for some time. Before retiring, she ran a library. Her relationship with her son, Filip, is not what she would like it to be. Sigrun, meanwhile, has advanced her career as a specialist physician in faraway Copenhagen. Johanna is delighted when her friend returns and moves into the house next door, finally to begin a book project she has been putting off for a long time. Johanna now also meets Erik Birksen, a teacher whom Sigrun has been married to for only a short time. Although Erik initially fears that he will now have less time with his wife, he soon discovers that he and Johanna share many interests. The time the three of them spend together is happy and carefree. Although the Birksens seem very much in love, Johanna notices some discord between them. Unexpectedly, Sigrun is asked by her former employer to go to Oslo for two weeks to help out in an emergency. Johanna and Erik continue to meet while Sigrun is away and grow increasingly close. Johanna does not want to give in to her budding feelings and desperately fights them. When Erik invites her onto the boat he bought from Magnus Petterson, they spend some special hours together on a small, uninhabited island. A night follows in which passion overcomes all reason. In the days that follow, they both avoid seeing each other. When Sigrun returns, Erik sees only one way to save his marriage: he tells his wife the truth. Sigrun is deeply hurt and at first refuses to believe what Erik tells her. When he also confesses that there is something between them that goes deeper than mere desire, it feels like a knife through her heart. She demands that Johanna leave their hometown. Johanna has now decided to accept her son’s request after all and go to Oslo, where she will look after her grandchild for about a year. Even when Johanna tries to say goodbye, Sigrun punishes her with silence, while Erik embraces her one last time. But there is silence between Erik and Sigrun, too, and it is Sigrun who maintains it. When, after more than two months, Erik finally manages to get his wife to speak with him again, she says that it apparently has not occurred to him that what he calls a reproach is simply pain. Erik says he knows what that means—he knows it very well—then breaks off mid-sentence and collapses in Sigrun’s arms. Berit, a young woman from Johanna’s hometown who is a friend of hers, calls and tells her that Erik has had a stroke and is now in the hospital. He has been placed in an induced coma. Johanna returns to visit Erik in the hospital. Sitting at his bedside, she confesses her love for him, not noticing that Sigrun has come in and heard everything. The next day, Sigrun gets a phone call: Erik is dead. One year later, Sigrun gives Johanna the urn containing Erik’s ashes. She had not wanted a grave … “where I could have visited him,” Johanna adds, then asks whether it really matters now who loved whom, when so little of a person remains. The women travel out together in the “Liberty” and commit Erik’s ashes to the sea. They have found their way back to each other, and neither of them will have to be alone during the long winter ahead.