This home, an enchantingly gabled, leafy affair, is no mere house; it is a Repository of Themes. The white-walled rooms spill over with natural light, but also with dark memories, stretching back to the Nazi occupation of Norway. Some of these are described by a narrator and visualized as ghostly incursions from the past. The sense of place is unerring, the chamber-piece atmosphere exactingly Bergmanesque. Even so, we sense a fairly elementary principle—the emotional, spiritual, and historical significance of the spaces we inhabit—hardening into a conceit. Trier, aiming for a diaphanous touch, ends up with something perilously diagrammatic: more a blueprint for a drama than the drama itself.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter