Solomamma

Bluesky

Edith (Lisa Loven Kongsli) is a single mother to a pre-school boy Sigurd, whose father was an anonymous sperm donor. A journalist by vocation, she tries to normalise her son’s origins by immersing him in children’s books about donor-conceived kids, raised by single parents, and expects others to support her efforts. But as progressive as Norway is legislatively (its 2020 Biotechnology Act amendment started allowing solo motherhood via sperm donors) people around Sigurd don’t seem to be cooperating. Director-writer Janicke Askevold’s moral drama draws on the recent legal victory to question its classification as such.

Sigurd’s classmates are inquisitive as to why he doesn’t have a father. Edith’s friends, while supportive, seem to probe her experiences with constant questions they frame as “asking without prejudice,” while not realising that, for Edith, it is the asking that constitutes prejudice. She doesn’t help her case by introducing them to her “sperm sister” Trine (Trude-Sofie Olavsrud Anthonsen) who has a daughter from the same anonymous man, a fact that the two have bonded over.

Chasing normality within the unconventional launches Edith in an internal tug-of-war that she projects onto her son’s behavior. His every quirk becomes a source of concern, a herald of a hereditary disorder she missed when selecting the sperm donor, or something he lied about. She (re)turns to his profile – a somewhat dystopian database containing the man’s childhood photographs, interests, and even a psych evaluation recording. The extensive list of his measurable attributes reads like a receipt of a designer baby procedure, with Edith hellbent on seeing beyond the numbers and hobbies – the source itself.

Expectations of her journalistic skills coming in handy in finding the man’s identity are deflated when Trine tells her who he is, without giving any context as to how or why she discovered him. A moralistic slippery slope ensues, that begins with Edith crossing the line of journalistic integrity. This guarantees a predictable trajectory to an inevitable end.

Edith’s family history is set against the dynamic between her and a cognitively declining mother Dorte (Celine Engebrigtsen) who, unlike Edith, was forced into single motherhood. It comes as no surprise that Dorte harbors resentment toward her daughter’s choice. As Sigurd’s significant co-caregiver fades, Edith is forced to face the realities of single motherhood, which, at times, she unfairly delegates to Trine while crossing line after line to learn more about her son’s biological father.

Unlike Dag Johan Haugerud’s Sex, Dreams, Love trilogy, which flourishes in exploring contemporary conundrums and taboos through heartfelt yet difficult conversations and transparency, Edith’s archetypal subterfuge seals her fate early on and delivers a meek denouement of the “ it takes a village” variety. As sleeplessness plagues Edith’s consciousness towards the end, she seeks her own mother’s safety by turning up to her room. “You have to sleep in your own bed now Edith,” Dorte remarks, nailing her childishness and the fact that at the end of the day we all have to sleep in the beds we have made.

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