Movies thrive on fresh settings, and Bent Hamer’s movie has one: the world of regulated measurements, where Norway’s national standard kilogram (just over two pounds) is pampered like a Rembrandt.
Guarding the kilo — kept at the Norwegian Institute of Weights & Measures — is Marie (Ane Dahl Torp), a lovely but stern scientist whose tidy world is disarranged when her beloved father (Stein Winge) has a heart attack. After that, sometimes the measurement-philosophy gets a little on-the-nose. But more often this is a gently droll tale, as when attractive Frenchman Pi (Laurent Stocker) hits Marie with a chat-up line: “Do you support washing or not washing the kilo?”
Hamer’s style is what might happen if Ulrich Seidl liked people, with immaculate...