Nothing Ever Really Ends
2016 · 24m · Norway
Directed by Jakob Rørvik
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
Across three consecutive New Year's Eves, young couple Ebba and Marius split up and reconcile repeatedly, unable to extinguish their toxic bond.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a relationship film, sure, but Rørvik's refusal to let either character off the hook—the way he keeps resetting the cycle instead of resolving it—that's genuinely unsettling in a way most breakup movies aren't brave enough to attempt.
The three-year structure echoes classical tragedy's economy of form, and the film's formal restraint—its refusal of melodrama despite every narrative beat that would justify it—places it in careful conversation with Bergman's chamber works.
That recurring New Year's Eve framework could be sentimental, but what saves it is the sound design during the reconciliation moments—how the ambient noise drops just slightly, making intimacy feel almost suffocating—a single technical choice that reframes the entire emotional axis.
Reviews
Jakob Rorvik's Nothing Ever Really Ends is a raw and heartfelt portrait of a toxic relationship, which can't quite be extinguished. Jakob Rorvik marries humour with sorrow, love with spite, making Nothing Ever Really Ends uncomfortably convincing and impossible to forget.