★★★½
“Don’t expect any applause. That doesn’t exist in our line of work.”
I guess the moral here is that things aren’t necessarily as they appear, and the truth can take quite some time to come out. After World War II, Norwegian actress Sonja Wigert was largely shunned, her career going downhill because she was seen as having fraternized with the German forces that had occupied Norway. She died in 1980, largely forgotten. But in 2005, it was revealed that Wigert (Berdal) had actually been operating as a spy on behalf of the Swedish government, who were very much concerned the Nazis had their country next on the list for invasion. Her “collaboration” was actually the actress using her fame to get close to high-level officials like Reichskommissar Josef Terboven (Scheer), and get information from them. This film is her story.
However, these already murky matters are complicated by several further factors. There’s an agent, ‘Maria’, working for the Nazis, and passing them information, who must be identified and stopped; Sonja’s “real” relationship, with Hungarian diplomat, Andor Gellért (Chapelle); her father’s incarceration at the hands of the Germans; and, last but not least, Terboven’s request that she become a spy for the Nazis, feeding them information on Sweden. After some early wobbles, the film’s script does a good job of keeping all these elements in play, without collapsing into the over-complex mess sometimes seen in the spy genre. It’s also nicely nuanced, with Wigert initially trying to remain neutral, until circumstances, in the shape of her father’s arrest, force her into getting off the fence.
There begins a very dangerous game – though as an actress, used to playing a role, Sonja seems well-equipped to it. [I was reminded of John Le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl, which also saw a thespian recruited into becoming a spy] Berndal, who previously made a good impression here as the villainess in Escape (Flukt), does another good job in a rather more sympathetic role as a reluctant secret agent. I’d like to have seen rather more about the tradecraft involved in her work. There are times when her actions seem almost to be too easy, with the security of the Nazis being close to non-existent, as she swans in to offices, and takes snaps of documents. I know a pretty face opens doors, but still…
There are points where it seems to be considerably more concerned with the relationships between the characters: the spy thriller as soap-opera, perhaps? In particular, the Sonja and Andor thread perhaps gets a bit more time than I’d like it to have received. However, it still managed to hold my interest, rather better than those couple of sentences might sound! The performances and period detail both have a ring of authenticity to them, and it’s a sobering reflection of a time where people sometimes had to make sacrifices without recognition. [Sonja’s handler says the lines at the top to her near the end] Sometimes, secrets go to the grave with those who hold them.
Dir: Jens Jonsson
Star: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Damien Chapelle, Alexander Scheer, Rolf Lassgård
a.k.a. Spionen