Digital Review - The Spy (2019)

During the 1930s and throughout the Second World War, Norwegian-born Sonja Wigert established herself as one of Scandinavia’s most famous actresses, appearing both on stage and in numerous films. But her visible success during the Nazi occupation of her home country blighted the rest of her career and it was only 25 years after her death in 1980 that the other side of her wartime life was revealed. She’d been working for the Swedish intelligence service.

Appropriately enough, in Jens Jonsson’s The Spy, she’s played by Norway’s biggest star, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, most familiar to wider audiences from Westworld. When the Swedes realise she has caught the attention of Terboven (Alexander Scheer), the most senior Nazi in occupied Norway, they recruit her to spy on him and discover the true identity of ’s most important secret agent in Oslo. But after starting an affair with the officer, she’s recruited by the Germans as well, agreeing to spy on their behalf so that they will release her elderly father from prison. What they don’t realise, of course, is that she’s a double agent and the information she gives them is of little use.

Although the context of her story is unfamiliar, the actual narrative bears all the hallmarks of a conventional spy yarn, even if it is based on a true story. Jonsson adopts a suitably respectful tone but, ultimately, this doesn’t save the film from the feeling that we’ve been here before and the overall effect is of something conventional and flat. All the elements are there for suspense, tension and heroism, but none of them are sufficiently developed, with a romantic sub-plot that provides the film’s one and only – but rather neat – red herring feeling like it’s been bolted on to pad things out.

ittedly, Jonsson tries to mix things up with the narrative, opening the film at what is essentially the mid-point, then filling in the back story and moving it forward to its conclusion. It works up to a point, and a sparing use of black and white coupled with some newsreel footage, gives it visual appeal but there’s no escaping that the first half hour is confusing enough to make you thankful for the replay function.

Bolso Berdal makes a brave attempt to make her character one of flesh and blood, but she’s hampered by an enigmatic script, plus the fact that Wigert was an actress makes you continually question the sincerity of the emotions on display. What was clearly intended as a tribute to an unsung – and misjudged – war hero is, in this instance, less than inspired and a sad disappointment all round.