Keeping an eye on things in the 'Kitchen'

October's Popular Science magazine listed the worst jobs in science -- gems such as mosquito bite volunteer, stool analyst, isolation chamber tester. You could add to that list the job depicted in the sweet and enormously appealing Norwegian film "Kitchen Stories": observer for the Swedish Home Research Institute in 1944.

The movie, which opens the Scandinavian Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts on Wednesday, centers on the 50ish character of Folke. Played by actor Tomas Norstrom (looking like Jack Lemmon in a suit, sweater vest, and fedora), he's part of a team of bland-faced "observers" who set up camp in rural nowheresville Norway to track the way single men use their kitchens.

The goal of the study is to figure out how to design and sell kitchen equipment, but what it demands is that the observers sit, silently, in the kitchens of the volunteers for weeks on end. They're not supposed to speak, because that would make them players in the environment. But asking two lonely people to share a farmhouse kitchen in the cold of winter and not talk is just cruel.

The first shot of Folke in the kitchen, however, is laugh-out-loud funny: He is perched on an Alice-in-Wonderland-like high chair in the corner, loose-leaf notebook open on his lap, briefcase at his side, pencil poised, and he is . . . observing. His subject, a gnarled older man named Isak, sits silently with his pipe and kettle and teacup. Isak (Joachim Calmeyer) glances up when he leaves the room, then returns, looks at Folke again, and turns out the light. Folke gives a sigh and rolls his eyes like Wallace's Gromit, and retreats to his doghouse -- his trailer, that is -- a sleek pod complete with record player and William Morris-esque wallpaper that is parked in the driveway.

Eventually the two men begin talking, and then sharing meals and laughing, putting on poker faces when Folke's supervisor comes to check on them.

"Kitchen Stories," written and directed by Bent Hamer, is Norway's 2003 entry to the Academy Awards and the same style of film as Norway's 2001 oddball buddy movie "Elling." That movie garnered an Oscar nomination in the foreign film category and did a modest business in the United States, grossing about $313,000.

Fifty-six countries have submitted films to the academy for the foreign language film award, and the final nominees -- typically there are five -- will be announced Jan. 27. The Scandinavian Film Festival is showing three of those films during its January run. In addition to Norway's "Kitchen Stories," the festival is playing Iceland's official entry, "Noi Albinoi," and Denmark's entry, "Reconstruction." (Sweden's entry, "Evil," screened at the Harvard Film Archive last month.)

"Noi Albinoi," about an albino teen named Noi, is being positioned as a kind of Icelandic "Donnie Darko," "Ghost World," or "Rushmore" -- the story of a smart, alienated young person who aches for love and escape. "Noi Albinoi," though, is bleaker than any of those American films, with stabs of off-kilter humor -- why, that's Jonathan Richman's "Summer Feeling" playing in Noi's stark kitchen -- and the melancholy blue light of short winter days. Writer-director Dagur Kari, a 29-year-old graduate of the Danish Film School in Copenhagen, also composed the Will Oldham-ish soundtrack to the film.

"Reconstruction," on the other hand, is a slick romance mystery, with nods to both noir and more fractured narratives like that of "Memento." A glance between a man and a woman on a Copenhagen subway platform leads to a night in a hotel and an impulsive decision to walk away from their other lives to be together. And then things get weird: Alex (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) returns to his apartment to find that it simply isn't there -- he stands where his top floor apartment door should be, and it's gone. His best friend doesn't recognize him, and neither does the girlfriend (Maria Bonnevie) he left behind on the subway. Even the new woman, Simone (Bonnevie again), plays at being blank when she and Alex meet a second time.

Narrating the film is Simone's husband, a novelist who is working on a story about a chance meeting. Is the film the figment of his imagination? What would he want to happen if his wife ever left him in real life?

The movie's first time writer-director, Christoffer Boe, another Danish Film School graduate, says that he reveled in depicting his own cynical interpretation of love. "Love is a dangerous illusion we can't live without," he says in press materials. "It encapsulates all our fears and wants. Love is never easy -- if done in the right way."

Seven of the festival's films make up a New Faces of Swedish Cinema package, copresented by the Consulate General of Sweden in New York and the Swedish Film Institute. As the institute puts it, "A new generation of Swedish filmmakers, many from immigrant backgrounds, has emerged in recent years. These young directors are producing movies that portray the ethnic and cultural changes that have shaped life in 21st-century Sweden."

One of the most spirited of the lot is Josef Fares's "Jalla! Jalla!" (it means "Let's go!" or "Hurry up!"), which follows two young men and their girl problems. One is having, as they say these days, erectile dysfunction and is trying everything he can, short of going to the doctor, to get back into action.

The other, the son of Lebanese immigrants (played by the lanky and handsome Fares Fares, the director's brother), is in love with a beautiful Swede but getting pushed by his family into an arranged marriage. He and the chosen Lebanese woman tell the families they'll marry but concoct a plan to get out of it, and they find themselves on a fast train to the union. "Jalla! Jalla!" was a hit in Sweden in 2001 and spawned a successful soundtrack by reggae and soul musician Daniel Lemma. The film also features music by Swedish pop bands the Hives and Nine.

Fares Fares also stars in "Days Like This," which won Sweden's highest film award for best screenplay a few years ago. It follows a door-to-door salesman through an apartment building and folds together several stories of couples he meets.

Other films in the festival that deal with the immigrant experience are "All Hell Let Loose," directed by Iranian actress and Swedish resident Susan Taslimi; "Wings of Glass," by Reza Bagher; and "The New Country," by Geir Hansteen Jorgensen.

Rounding out the lineup are "Invisible," by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist, which follows a bullied boy who seems to have become invisible; "Four Women," by Ugandan-born Baker Karim, which reunites friends who have gathered for a wedding; and "The River," by Jarmo Lampela, which weaves a half-dozen overlapping sketches covering gay teen love, a prodigal son, infidelity, extreme depression, the decision to terminate cancer treatment, and, most winningly and thankfully, flirtations at a pizza shop.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lesliebrokaw@yahoo.com.