The Wrong Track (now on Netflix) is Norwegian skiing movie that keeps a warm heart in a cold environment. And you can now add cross-country skiing to the list of mid-tier spectator-ish sports that are subjects of inspirational films about good, but wayward people who find some Life Focus by tackling a significant physical challenge. Hallvar Witzo directs Ada Eide, who plays an unemployed single mom whose brother slaps some skis on her feet and forces her into a metaphor that still manages to carry a bit of dramatic cache despite it being a cliche. The movie is nice, but is it nice enough? An investigation:
The Gist: In the movie they call it the Birken, which the internet tells me is a truncation of Birkebeinerrennet, an annual 54-kilometer cross-country ski marathon that features upwards of 16,000 participants of various skill levels. You’ve got some pros who finish it with ridiculous efficiency, middle-tier nights-and-weekend hobbyists like Gjermund (Trond Fausa) and spirited back-of-the-pack-ers who gut it out for hours and hours and are thrilled to (hopefully) finish eventually like Emilie (Eide). Not that Emilie really wanted to do the Birken in the first place. We meet her as she quits a shit gig at a juice bar, goes out for beers, gets busted peeing outside by a cute cop (Deniz Kaya), goes home to her five-year-old Lilli (Saga Meisfjordskar) and flips out when her broken toilet floods her flat. Rough 24 hours.
As plumbers infiltrate the living space, Emilie’s ex and Lilli’s dad, Joachim (Christian Rubeck), takes the kid and Emilie knocks on her older brother Gjermund’s door. No call ahead? Nope. It’s like she’s crashed with him many times before in many times of can’t-get-her-shit-together desperation. She interrupts Gjermund and his wife Silje (Marie Blokhus) as they dispassionately try to conceive a child while watching a dumbass parody of Is It Cake? Emilie helps herself to the wine and tells Gjermund she’ll hang out here for however long it takes to get her flat fit again. He’s not thrilled, but he rolls over – and then lays down an ultimatum: She’ll race the Birken with him, or get out.
Of course, Emilie resists this idea. Back’s against the wall, though, and Gjermund rightly believes that giving his sister something to focus on will help her out long-term. So she pulls on the ear-warmer thing and gets to huffing and puffing during the obligatory training montage. Meanwhile, there will be subplots: Joachim acts like an ass and threatens to fight for full custody of Lilli. Joachim’s wife Celine (Shana Mathai) is pregnant, and seems to get along smashingly with Emillie. Silje and Gjermund reach the boiling point of their frustrating three-year-long attempt to have a baby; he watches sadly as Aunt Silje sits on the floor and braids little Lilli’s hair. The day of the race arrives and who’s one of the volunteers? The cute cop, of course. And Joachim meets the tall, gorgeous and flirty influencer (Idun Daae Alstad) whose ski videos he watches religiously – yes, raise an eyebrow. While some things threaten to come together, other things threaten to fall apart. Life!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Funny how Netflix dropped this and A Copenhagen Love Story on consecutive days, considering they feature stories about wannabe-parents struggling to conceive. Anyway, The Wrong Track is what you might get if you made a smoothie out of Run Fatboy Run (out-of-shape Simon Pegg runs a marathon) and Eddie the Eagle (true story of a sub-mediocre ski jumper who somehow made the Olympics).
Performance Worth Watching: Eide, Fausa and Blokhus form a strong core trio with solid dramedy chops who do some excellent work with a screenplay that’s content in its genial mediocrity. Which is to say they Elevate The Material, as is necessary.
Memorable Dialogue: Silje shakes her head at her sister-in-law: “She downed the Barolo. I’m not even angry. I’m just impressed.”
Sex and Skin: The film features a remarkably European approach to the human body, which is to say, we see a fair amount of it, both male and female, like it’s the casual thing it absolutely is and should be.
Our Take: I’ll be blunt: The Wrong Track offers zero surprises. You’ll see it all coming like you’ve got a bird’s-eye view of the story from the peak of a Norwegian mountain on a crystal-clear day. But the cast makes the characters feel lived-in, recognizable and real enough to render them empathetic within the familiarities of their personal conundrums. We’ve all known or been someone who’s faced some of these Life Challenges, and to feel a little something for Movie People going through this stuff is natural, and I know I keep Capitalizing Things but the cliches here pretty much demand it so please bear with my indulgences.
But not every movie needs to challenge our sensibilities in order to be good. Of course, we also need to delineate gourmet meals from comfort food, and The Wrong Track is obviously the latter, a slab of your mom’s meatloaf next to mashed potatoes and covered with a ladleful of gravy that she stirred for minutes upon minutes with the corn starch and everything, because it’s better than the stuff out of a can. And to further torture the metaphor, the cast here makes something just-special-enough out of a just-add-water screenplay, warming a cockle as we root for Emilie to get out of the thing in the title and find what she needs: Direction, patience, understanding, love. There are times when we worry that there isn’t much to Emilie as a character, but Eide gives her a shade or three of color and nuance as a mother, sibling and friend. The actress renders the character with enough love to make her deserving of the movie’s conclusion, and yes, that makes the movie nice enough.
Our Call: The Wrong Track doesn’t finish first or last, but does well enough to earn a thumbs-up. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.