Review of Limbo (1999) by Ingela A — 04 Jun 2012

Limbo fea­tures one of the strongest per­form­ances I've seen in quite a while. Sonia (Line Verndal) has delayed joining her hus­band Jo in Trinidad to care for her mother, who's just had a stroke. But after six months, she packs up her two young chil­dren and leaves Norway for the Caribbean. Upon her arrival, she exper­i­ences much more than cul­ture shock. She dis­covers that her hus­band has been car­rying on an affair with a local woman in her absence. Despite his declar­a­tion that it was just a "fling" and that it is over, she can't seem to trust him, or to settle into her new life.

Though it might sound a bit like a soap opera on paper, in reality, the per­form­ances lift this con­sid­er­ably, turning it into a char­acter study of a woman trapped in cir­cum­stances seem­ingly beyond her con­trol. When she finally develops the strength to choose her own future, it coin­cides with a moment of tragedy that gives the film an ambiguous but somehow sat­is­fying conclusion.