Dag Johan Haugerud's fascinating Nordic drama

There's a lot to love Love (OR Kjaelighet), but the generic English title is not one of them. That handle could confuse it with works by Gaspar Noé and Judd Apatow, among others, and could potentially delay viewers from finding it via search engines. Which would be a shame, because Norwegian writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Venice-premiered dramedy is a refreshing delight.

Honest, thoughtful, and boldly voluble in its observation of modern dating mores in the app age, it deserves further exposure beyond the festival circuit. The second part of a thematically but not narratively connected trilogy, its predecessor Sex played in Berlin, and Dreams has yet to arrive: it is sure to find traction among viewers who enjoy refined and nuanced Scandinavian fare such as The worst person in the worldthe kind of romantic social gatherings in which French cinema and Richard Linklater excel Before series.

In contemporary Oslo, Marianne (Andrea Braein Hovig) is a doctor specializing in urology, which means we first meet her as she breaks the bad news to a stunned patient: that he has prostate cancer. Nurse Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen) is in the room at the time and notices that the patient doesn't seem to have absorbed what Marianne has just told him. He goes out of his way to find the man and offer him clarification. The scene subtly underscores the point that, for all Marianne's scientific knowledge of men's plumbing and biology, she doesn't always understand how their minds work, something Tor believes he's more familiar with as a gay man.

The two colleagues meet on the ferry to an island that is part of the larger Oslo conurbation. Tor is temporarily living there for the summer; Marianne is heading to a dinner that is actually a kind of blind date, so she can meet the host, Ole Harald (Thomas Gullestad). He is a geologist who, like most middle-aged singles, has baggage, in the form of a young daughter and a former alcoholic, Solveig (Marian Saastad Ottesen), who live next door to make shared custody easier.

Along the way, Tor explains how he uses Grindr to find potential lovers, and often finds himself having romantic encounters on the ferry itself, with guys who run the gamut of male sexuality, from straight to cruise ship passengers to those out in search of a life partner. Tor’s happy acceptance of casual sex seems to persist with Marianne, and she finds herself encouraged to touch Ole Harald’s butt, signaling her attraction. The gesture works in a way, but things move much more slowly for these straight people. It will take another date or so, and a lot of in-depth conversations about circumstances and life goals, before Marianne and Ole Harald finally hit it off. Still, her curiosity about app-assisted hookups is piqued. Between the initial meeting and her first night with Ole Harald, she uses Tinder to find a partner for a quickie, an experience that doesn’t exactly go as planned, even though she enjoys the sex.

Meanwhile, with the kind of delicate symmetry that makes the film so engaging, we see Tor begin to reconsider his commitment to no-strings-attached sex. One night on the ferry, he meets Bjorn (Lars Jacob Holm), a handsome dad at least 20 years older than Tor who has barely used Grindr before. Bjorn shyly backs away from sex on the boat, but opens up to Tor in conversation. Some time later, Tor sees him at the clinic at the hospital where he and Marianne work and notices Bjorn’s agitation over the bad news. From there, an initially nonsexual relationship develops that brings out Tor’s more domestic, tender side, something that has clearly helped him excel as a nurse.

DP Cecilie Semec's simple shots, lit to benefit from the low-angle sunlight of Nordic summer nights, unfold in long, languid takes that simply sit back and let the actors do all the work. Fortunately, the cast here is up to the task and the dialogue, especially between Hovig and Jacobsen, has a charming musicality, like luminous duets. Along the way, the film makes some interesting points about friendship and romance, especially when it comes to studying the reaction of Marianne's art historian friend Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), who is scandalized by Marianne's zip-up screwing adventures. Love, to quote that old, giddy ballad, is truly a thing of a thousand wonders that takes many forms, a multiplicity that Love the film is silently alive.