Bathtub by the Sea
2018 · 15m · Norway
Directed by Ole-André Rønneberg
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
A solitary lighthouse keeper's rigid daily routine is upended when a mermaid washes ashore during his ritual bath. A gentle meditation on aging, loneliness, and the fear of becoming obsolete.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A mermaid showing up to crash a lighthouse keeper's bath routine should be ridiculous, and somehow Rønneberg makes it work by refusing to wink at the absurdity—that commitment to sincerity is almost subversive, but it still lands safer than I'd like.
This is formally immaculate: a film that knows exactly what it owes to the Scandinavian tradition of meditative landscape cinema and the folkloric undercurrent of Northern European storytelling, executing both with painterly restraint and a brass score that feels inevitable rather than ornamental.
The entire film pivots on the decision to keep the mermaid nearly peripheral—a glimpse, a presence—rather than centering her, which transforms this from a contact narrative into something about the keeper's interior weather, and that single restraint choice makes the whole thing breathe.
Reviews
Its meditative pace and striking Norwegian setting give it an other-worldly charm that floats along like the sea breeze.
A gentle meditation on ageing and the fear of becoming obsolete — the faded, pastel cinematography encapsulates the man's colourless life well and actually begins to shift through the course of the story.
Festivals
- Prato Film Festival 2019, Best Short
- Norwich Film Festival 2020