A STORM AT CHRISTMAS (2022)

Despite the Hallmarkian title, this is a very adult six hour Norwegian miniseries that has little to do with Christmas. Some viewers have compared it to LOVE ACTUALLY, but it more resembles a little-remembered 60s ensemble film called THE V.I.P.s. When a major storm shuts down all flights out of an airport in Oslo the day before Christmas Eve, we follow, in almost real time, the concerns of a bunch of unconnected people, some of whom become connected in unexpected ways. Pop star Ida, who has a new album out, feels her creative drive has run down. Her personal assistant Ingvild feels a bit abused by Ida and is looking for a creative outlet of her own. A young girl named Kaja gets tired of her parents' constant bickering (which is threatening to blow up into a divorce) and runs away, hiding from her parents and from the security people trying to find her. Berg, a concert pianist, is experiencing a career low point after a bad review goes viral. Ronja, the airport priest, is trying to help an old man who won’t talk and may be suffering from dementia. There's also an insufferable rich bitch who abuses everyone she runs across, a young woman whose naïve romanticism irritates a pilot whom she fixates on, a friendly bartender who learns he has terminal cancer, and a lonely dog stranded in a carrier. Over the six hours of the series, these characters (and a few others) cross paths, interact, and influence each other. Despite the melodramatic narratives, there are moments of humor, many involving an easily irritated Santa Claus figure, and all the characters, even the worst assholes (the pianist, the rich bitch), get some sort of redemption.

The first hour or so is hard to get through, partly because of the sheer unlikability of many of the characters, and also because you know exactly how some of these plotlines are going to turn out. But there are some surprises in store, and a couple of the characters who are ciphers for most of the running time—a young woman all alone and seemingly at odds who is looking for a present for her father, a man dressed in shorts heading for a vacation in Majorca—have unexpected twists in their stories in the last half-hour. This was filmed in a real, and quite grand, airport in Oslo, and that adds immeasurably to the atmosphere of the series. All the acting is good, with standouts including Jon Oigarden (pictured) as the bartender, Maibritt Saerens as the priest, Ibrahim Fall as the Santa, and Ravdeep Singh Bajwa as the pilot. Alexandra Rapaport deserves special mention; she makes the awful rich woman truly hateful but then executes her personality change in the end quite well. Near the end, a cathartic moment for many of the characters occurs as the pianist plays "Over the Rainbow" on the airport piano—at first I fought the scene but I wound up in tears. Overall, it's not exactly what I would call heartwarming, but if you can get past the first hour, and don’t mind some bald-faced emotional manipulation here and there, it does eventually pay off. [Netflix]