Film

Sweet Land

Cert: PG

Description: As the dust settles in 1920 Minnesota, German woman Inge arrives to marry kindly farmer Olaf, who she has never seen before. She doesn't speak the language and the Norwegian locals treat Inge with utmost suspicion. Minister Sorrensen refuses to preside over the wedding and actively encourages his flock to ostracize the newcomer, sowing the seeds of distrust and enmity. Over time Inge endears herself to her neighbours, and she and Olaf fall deliriously in love.

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Dir: Ali Selim.

Cast: Elizabeth Reaser, Tim Guinee, John Heard

Country: US.

Year: 2005.

Duration: 110mins

Sweet Land doesn't have kick to it

A little bland: Sweet Land

By Charlotte O'Sullivan
4 Sep 2008

A shy orphan, Inge (Elizabeth Reaser), arrives in Minnesota in the Twenties, expecting to be married to Olaf (Tim Guinee), a Norwegian farmer in need of a wife. Unluckily for her, she�s German and, thanks to a chance meeting, happens to be clutching papers for the American Socialist Party, so their wedding is nixed.

What follows is a love story that sometimes proves edgy (there are shades of John Ford�s The Grapes of Wrath) but is more often blandly sweet. Reaser has a lovely face but her character remains out of reach. Alan Cumming and Alex Kingston (as Inge and Olaf�s fertile friends) provide the honied ham.