Blind

Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) was not always blind. But as her condition developed, she spends more and more of her time within her and her husband’s apartment. A strain develops within their relationship, and Ingrid confronts her insecurities about her personal life and her blindness within a story that she writes while her husband is at work.

In her writing, Ingrid imagines the infidelities that her husband (Henrik Rafaelsen) might commit during the day while he leaves her at their apartment. We gather that, in real life, her husband is supporting and caring for her withstanding the onset of her blindness, but Ingrid lets her imagination devise a scenario where this isn’t the case to provide titillation to herself otherwise absent in the couple’s vanishing sex life. Her story is situated firmly within the stereotypes of modern life (themes of isolation and struggles with intimacy and communication are all present within) and although it isn’t as raucous as Nicholson Baker’s erotic novels, it shares similar comedic tendencies.

Over time, Ingrid’s story develops enough similarities with her own life and she develops insights into herself otherwise unrealized. Despite the sadness and sterility that Ingrid details in her story, there are touching moments of sympathy and warmth, echoing her personal life.

Director Eskil Vogt navigates deftly between depicting Ingrid and the characters within her story, blurring the narrative distance between the two through common themes. At times Blind is perplexing, clarity held just out of reach of the viewer until, with great satisfaction, Ingrid’s story is resolved.