1001 Grams

Cine Europa 2018

Shangri-la Cinemas

From Norway comes a quirky and delicate love story between Nordic Marie and French Pi. Marie is a scientist who specializes in measurements. Her daily routine is going to work, conversing with her father who is a colleague at work and having meals alone at home. 

Her father Ernst is the one who brings the national kilo of Norway to Paris, France for some annual gathering of other like minded individuals for a conference on weights. When her father succumbs to a fatal heart attack, Marie is the one assigned to attend the Paris symposium. 

Marie strikes as a lonely, taciturn woman whose whole world revolves on her work and her close relationship with her father. There are hints/scenes of a ex husband/boyfriend moving out of their apartment although they never exchange any pleasantries. So Paris provides a welcome break from her routine as well as her grief upon the sudden loss of her beloved dad.

She meets Pi, a French professor/scientist who also volunteers at the institute where the weights are measured. They hit it off as she speaks a fairly good amount of French and an unlikely romance between them. 

Pristine cinematography invades our senses with great Nordic scenery, French countryside where the seminar is held  as well as the quaint little streets of Paris.  Never in my wildest imagination did I think that there is a whole industry devoted to the actual weight of a kilo, fascinating science stuff indeed. Dialogue is in Norwegian, English and French with English subtitles. 

It is a delightful art movie that tackles disappointment, grief and love in an unusual place for two less lonely people in the world. 

P.S.

1001 grams refers to the weight of the cremated ashes of Marie's father. An eerie yet interesting thought.