Parky At the Pictures (13/11/2026)

(Reviews of Fjord: and Give Me the Ball!)

FJORD.

This spring saw Romanian Christian Mungiu join an exclusive club. Its members are Francis Ford Coppola, Emir Kusturica, Shohei Imamura, Bille August, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach, and Ruben Östlund. Their achievement? They have all won the Palme d'or twice, with Mungiu qualifying after he followed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) with Fjord (2026), which continued his love affair with the Cannes Film Festival, as he has also won the Best Screenplay and Best Director prizes for Beyond the Hills (2012) and Graduation (2016). His other two features, Occident (2002) and R.M.N. (2022) weren't too shabby, either.

Following the death of his parents, Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan) leaves Bucharest with wife Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) and their five children to settle in the Norwegian port of Ålesund. As strict Evangelical Christians, they keep teenagers Elia (Vanessa Ceban) and Emmanuel (Jonathan Ciprian Breazu) on a short leash. They are first seen having a family hug after Mihai has admonished the pair and there is little evident affection in the way they respond before they head off for school with younger siblings Judith (Teodora Sabina) and Timotei (Filip Sebastian Bara).

They are welcomed by principal Mats Halberg (Markus Scarth Tønseth), who also happens to be their next-door neighbour, with his Swedish lawyer wife, Mia (Lisa Carlehed), and his daughter, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), who is paired with Elia in class. Mats confides in the Gheorghius that they are having problems with Noora, which are compounded by the fact that Mats's father, Åke (Øyvind Venstad Kjeksrud), has been wheelchair-bound since suffering a stroke. As a trained nurse, Lisbet offers to help out, while Mihai (who is an aerospace engineer) gets an IT job at the offices of the local church, where they have already become regulars.

Noora is puzzled by the control Mihai has over Elia and Emmanuel after he bans them from attending her birthday party after they knock over a pan while fighting near baby Veniamin. She has come to the house because she cut her wrist when Elia and Emmanuel refused to go on a boat ride with her and Mihai decides she's a bad influence because she's so rebellious. However, Elia's gym teacher has noticed bruises on her cheek and shoulder and she notifies Child Protection, despite Mats suggesting they wait because he's seen nothing to suggest that Mihai and Lisbet are abusive towards their children.

Shortly after an avalanche rumbles down the fjord behind the school (which nobody pays much attention to because they know it will stop well short), Elia and Emmanuel are interviewed by Gunda (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) from Child Protection and she ascertains that they are sometimes smacked if they miss Bible study. This leads to Mihai being taken into police custody, while Gunda comes to the house (with a Norwegian flag billowing outside the window) to inform Lisbet of what has been said and to take the other children into care while the case is being assessed. She persuades them to let her keep the baby because she is breastfeeding, but they admonish her when she expresses frustration and resistance and she is forced to let Judith and Timotei go with Gunda when they come home for their lunch.

Reluctant to sign a statement in which he disagrees with the reference to the light taps he gives the kids on their behinds, Mihai seeks assistance from the church on the grounds of religious discrimination. He rubs lawyer Rita Berg (Anne Kokkinn) up the wrong way by not letting Lisbet speak for herself and she is distraught when Child Protection insist on placing Veniamin with a foster family. Noora is dismayed by Elia being taken away (as she has a crush on her) and gets into a fight with former best friend, Elsa (Sofie Vartdal).

When Mihai asks for clarity at the first hearing of the children's court when it's stated that they suspect Veniamin is suffering from shaken baby syndrome, he is ordered to stay silent and Rita quits because she can't abide his chauvinism. Desperate, Lisbet asks Mia to represent them, although she has no experience of children's law and is aware how powerful Child Protection is. Mats is caught in the middle and loses his temper with Noora because he doesn't like the fact that she has been looking up the words to hymns on her phone. Having consulted bus driver-cum-counsellor Frida (Lisa Loven Kongsli), she agrees to help because she thinks the language barrier is a problem because the key words being used have different gradations of meaning.

Mia arranges for a visit with the children and Noora insists on coming along. She tells Mihai and Lisbet to keep their emotions in check because Child Protection will be monitoring them. Elia slips away to see Noora, who gives her a phone with a tracker, which she hides. The meeting is obviously stiff, as it takes place in a reception area and is being filmed. But Elia and Emmanuel hug their parents readily and ask about their siblings.

While Mihai and Lisbet take an anger management course, Mia informs them that the custody hearing has been postponed because Child Protection is seeking to delay returning the children until a criminal trial rules on Mihai and Lisbet admitting using corporal punishment. Seething that do-gooders are ruining his life when no one would bat an eye in Romania, he announces that he is taking charge because the women have tried their best and failed. He invites Samuel (Adrian Titieni) and Dan (Alin Panc) from the Romanian embassy and reporter Amalia (Ana Bodea) to hear his side of the story. Mihai also contacts conservative Christian groups because he feels they are being discriminated against for their faith. They raise a petition and kvetch about liberal values getting out of control, with Amalia noting that Child Protection makes good money from referring cases to psychologists and by spinning cases out.

Meanwhile, Lisbet carries on nursing and tending to their sheep. Mats tells her that Frida will testify that Elia's bruises could have been caused by gym lessons or other innocent means. Questioned by Attorney Jacobsen (Christian Rubek), however, Frida still backs up her colleague's contention that they had a duty to report the bruises and the fact that seven year-old Judith had told a lesbian classmate that she was committing a sin. Mia talks Lisbet through the incident with the hot pan, but Jacobsen determines the force with which she pushed Elia and Emmanuel away had amounted to a slap. He also gets her to admit that she had physically punished them on other occasions.

One afternoon, Noora wheels Åke to the edge of a jetty at the dock and Lisbet arrives in time to pull him out of the water. At the hospital, Mats warns Mia about the religious group backing the Gheorghius, as they might be dangerous. He admits finding it hard getting to know their neighbours and feels their unswerving trust in the Bible is hard to justify in the modern age. But Mia reminds him that they are not on trial for their beliefs.

In court Jacobsen produces a Romanian maxim about beating children to teach them and Mihai argues that he never used anything more than a slap on the butt. He grew up in this culture and it did him no harm, but accepts this is not how things are seen in Norway. Jacobsen asks Mihai to slap him and, when he refuses because he doesn't have any responsibility for how he turns out, the lawyer brings foster mother Johanna (Emilie Hetland) to the stand and she claims she can give the same love as biological parents without resorting to violence. She also says that Elia and Emmanuel had been prevented from listening to modern music or watching YouTube.

They were even denied mobile phones. But Noora uses the one she gave to Elia to visit them and suggests hiding them away in a family cabin. Meanwhile, Åke has moved into the home where Lisbet works and he asks her to stop bringing him food. He also tells her that God has told him the children will be fine.

Back in court, Jacobsen asks for Mihai's views on what a traditional family is and uses this to claim that he will continue to indoctrinate his children if they are returned. Gunda also tells Mia that she believes the Gheorghius have learnt nothing from their experience, as they continue to see themselves as the victims rather than their children. When Mia tries to say she would sad to live in a country where people can't practice religious beliefs, Jacobsen declares his heart is breaking and the judge (Camilla Belsvik) adjourns while she considers her options.

She offers to return the children if Mihai and Lisbet plead guilty to striking them. They refuse because they won't get to defend themselves at trial and Mia persuades the judge to let the kids come home, while retaining contact with their foster families. Lisbet is required to quit her job to be a full-time mother, while Mihai is told not to `educate' the children. But he hovers over Elia when she chats to Noora after a Sunday church service at which Mia was presented with flowers. Mihai also makes Emmanuel sit with the girls, as he doesn't want them to be left alone. Mats also has his misgivings, but he is pleased the family has been reunited and is relieved that Mia won't represent Lisbet and Mihai at their abuse trial.

The judge decides that the Gheorghius need to be monitored before the trial, but Mia doesn't get to tell them because she is called to the home because her father-in-law has died. Lisbet helps her collect his things, but says nothing about the plan to leave on Easter Sunday and catch the ferry to Denmark before heading back to Romania. Noora is distraught that she might never see Elia again and has Mia drive her to the terminal. They arrive just as the ferry pulls away and Noora walks on the water, as she calls to her friend, who urges her to be careful.

With the notable exception of Tudor Vladimir Panduru's superb widescreen cinematography, this fact-based drama is a major disappointment. At best, it could be seen as a scathing satire on Scandinavian conformity. But that shouldn't require 146 minutes. Given that he has spent his career exploring institutional malfunction and cultural divides, it has to be said that the biggest problem is Cristian Mungiu's clumsy screenplay, which reduces virtually every adult to a caricature, while tackling the complex moral issues raised with a sweeping lack of finesse that makes one wonder what on earth Park Chan-wook and his jury were thinking in awarding the Palme d'or to a film closer in tone to Thomas Vinterburg's overwrought child abuse saga, The Hunt (2012), than Savannah Leaf's harrowing child custody study, Earth Mama (2023).

Much has been made of how daring the performances of Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan are in playing Christian fundamentalists who are being prosecuted smug progressives for raising their children in a manner that doesn't suit the Norwegian Child Protection service. But Lisbet and Mihai are so sketchily delineated that it's impossible to form a judgement on whether they caused the bruising on their daughter's cheek and back. Given the vigorousness of the wrestling sessions in which Elia participates in PE, it seems more likely that these are the source of her injuries. But they become something of a MacGuffin, as Mungiu isn't really interested in determining whether Elia suffered more than the occasional slap on the bottom. He seems to want to present Norway's Child Protection system as a liberal democratic equivalent of a sinister Ceaușescu agency, as it never questions its methods while operating at disturbing speed with a distinct lack of accountability. This melodramatic approach filters into the depiction of the police and the judiciary, with the prosecuting counsel swaggering around like a hot-shot lawyer in a Hollywood legal comedy and posing leading questions that rarely offend the judge's sense of fair play.

However, Mihai and Lisbet are equally unpersuasive because Mungiu opts not to give them much backstory or any depth, either as individuals or as a parenting couple. Played like a sleepwalker in a evangelical manosphere, Mihai is clearly hampered by his lack of Norwegian. But his decency is compromised by self-righteous arrogance and Stan (who was born in Romania) gives him all the appeal of Richard Attenborough's John Reginald Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971), with the shot of him peering through the patio doors at Noora and Elia (who is virtually a Stepford child) hugging epitomising the film's almost Loachian disdain for nuance. Despite the contention that the Gheorghius shouldn't be judged for their demeanour, Reinsve's Lisbet is allowed to be more empathic through her work as a nurse. Yet we get no sense of her maternal feeling or how her partnership with Mihai works (or doesn't). Also where's the mother she moved here to be near? Lisa Carlehed has an easier ride as the voice of reason, but Mia and Mats are also thinly limned, with their most distinguishing features being the fact they resemble their embattled neighbours - which is itself another gauche gambit from a director who has built his reputation for exacting detail and unflinching realism.

The latter is notably absent from the denouement, which makes little sense on several fronts. Given the tenacity of Gunda and her cohorts to make life as difficult as possible for the Gheorghius, it seems unlikely that they would return the children without recognising the flight risk. But, once again, Mungiu doesn't seem particularly invested in the situation - just as he isn't in the Åke subplot that hints Mats is unfit to care for his clearly unhappy father - as the drive to the ferry terminal is entirely suspense free and Noora and Mia are able to catch up with the family, even though they had a lengthy head start. As for the closing image of Noora walking on water, well why not, as so much else here seems highly unlikely - besides, of course, the Norwegian sang froid in the face of an avalanche?

GIVE ME THE BALL!

Since being nominated for an Oscar for co-directing The Farm: Angola, USA (1998) with Jonathan Stack, New Yorker Liz Garbus has refused to duck difficult issue in such documentaries as The Execution of Wanda Jean (2002), The Nazi Officer's Wife (2003), the Emmy-winning Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), the Oscar-nominated Killing in the Name (2011), and All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020). However, she also has a knack for getting inside the minds of people in the public eye, as she demonstrated with

Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011), Love, Marilyn (2012), What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015), which was nominated for an Oscar and won an Emmy, and Becoming Cousteau (2021). Now, in tandem with Elizabeth Wolff, she bounces back from the ghastly Netflix ordeal, Harry & Meghan (2022), with Give Me the Ball!, a profile of tennis legend, Billie Jean King.

Speaking to camera in a fast-cut opening section, Billie Jean King explains how much she had on her plate in 1973. She was fighting to get equal prize money for women tennis players by setting up their own tour. In addition, she was seeking a divorce from husband Larry King after discovering her true sexual identity. This revelation needed keeping from a media obsessed with Watergate. But King also needed its support, especially when the 29 year-old was challenged to the so-called Battle of the Sexes by 55 year-old ex-pro, Bobby Riggs. As the blizzard of images cross-cut into her recollection attests, it was a busy time and it turned out to be a landmark year for the women's movement.

Born in Long Beach, California in November 1943, Billie Jean Moffitt loved all ball games, even though her mother said touch football wasn't ladylike. Friend Susan Williams introduced her to tennis and free lessons in the park with pro Clyde Walker convinced her that she wanted to be No.1 in the world - especially after seeing pioneering Black player Althea Gibson on court. With younger brother Randy also wanting to play baseball, parents Bill and Betty had to work three jobs to get the cash to run their kids to wherever the action was.

Aware as she rose through the junior ranks of the preconceptions and prejudices inherent in the sport, King vowed to change things when she reached the apex, particularly after being barred from a photograph at the Los Angeles Tennis Club because she was wearing the white shorts her mother had sewn for her rather than a dress. Julie Heldman recalls how Moffitt was an aggressive player with a man-sized competitive streak that helped her win the Wimbledon Ladies Doubles in 1961 with Karen Hantze. As there was no money in tennis, she also pursued an education at California State University, where she met and married Larry King, who supported her sporting and feminist ambitions.

Joining the tour full time, King won Wimbledon three years in a row from 1966-68 and she recalls her fury when Rod Laver got £2000 and she got £750 after winning the first Open Era tournament with prize money. Rosie Casals recalls her own indignation before Larry King suggested setting up a women's tour. Glady Heldman (Julie's mother) owned World Tennis magazine and she helped find Virginia Slims as a sponsor and nine players went professional (despite the threat of being excluded from the majors). In addition to King, Casals, and Helman, the others were compatriots Nancy Richey, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, and Australians Judy Tegart and Kerry Melville. They also signed up African Americans Ann Koger, Sylvia Hooks, and Bonnie Logan. But it was King who held things together (with Larry's help as a promoter and manager) and a wonderful montage shows her distinctive brand of balletic pugnacity on court, as Casals and Heldman admit she was almost impossible to beat. Yet the rivalry was underpinned by a sorority closemess, as the group travelled together and endured an often punishing schedule to put women's tennis on the map.

After a triumph-filled 1972, King realised she only earned $10,000 to Ilie Nastase's $25,0000. She threatened not to return to the US Open without equal prize money and she won the battle. However, Larry signed her up to a magazine article about abortion and she had to endure press and talk show questions about why she had terminated a pregnancy in 1971. The episode confirmed that she didn't want to conform to her mother's expectations or her husband's and she asked him for a divorce. He refused, even after a frank BBC interview, in which she admitted her life would be different if she were single. King confides to camera about her eating disorder around this period and she admits that this was brought about because she was so conflicted over her sexuality.

She was also exhausted trying to provide a platform for future stars like 17 year-old Chris Evert, who remembers playing her in a final in Florida after she had flown in two hours before after spending the day in business meetings in New York. Footage of the match shows King playing through serious leg cramps and she concedes looking back that she needed alone time to sort herself out. During a break, she met hairdresser Marilyn Barnett and fell in love. However, she knew it would endanger everything she had been working for if she made the relationship public. Rosie Casals knew what she was going through, but Chris Evert couldn't fathom things when she saw King with Marilyn one week and Larry the next.

In the midst of all this, Bobby Riggs decided that American women had it too easy and he chose King as his chief target for daring to confront the patriarchy. When she refused to play him, he challenged Margaret Court in May 1973 and beat her, much to King's chagrin, as the Australian wasn't on the tour and didn't believe that women should get equal prize money. Having thrashed Court 6-2 6-1, Riggs used his raised profile to goad King into a showdown.

King was at a low ebb after having withdrawn from the US Open against Heldman in disgust at her opponent questioning the length of a break between two games. But she acclimatised at the Houston Astrodome because she knew this was a one-off deal that she had to win. Things with Marilyn had reached a head, but King retained her focus as 90 million tuned in to see announcer Howard Cosell wrap his arm around Rosie Casals's neck as he was interviewing her before the match. He also declared as King was carried into the arena on a chair that she could be a Hollywood leading lady if she just would just grow her hair and take her glasses off!

With Larry and Marilyn courtside and her parents in the bleachers, King started nervously and had to break back to 3-3 in the first of five sets. But she won after Riggs double faulted and she felt her focus and confidence grow. The second followed 6-3 and she allowed herself a small smile after the drop shot that took the set. On camera, however, she insists she didn't take anything for granted against any opponent in her life. On jumping the net after losing the third set 6-3, Riggs admitted he had underestimated her and King couldn't wait to tell her father, as that was one of his first lessons to his kids when they set out to play sports. She kissed Larry at courtside before raising her trophy, with relief mattering more than the $100,000 purse, as she had not set the women's cause back by losing. She had given it an unprecedented boost by winning.

Huge endorsement deals followed, as she and Larry launched WomenSports magazine and World Team Tennis, with Philadelphia Freedom inspiring a song by her new friend, Elton John. Sporting a perm, she was once coaxed on stage to sing backing vocals, but they also shared secret lives and food issues that helped them bond. Despite having broken up with Marilyn, King was scared she would cause trouble and confides that she worried she would shoot her when she came to Los Angeles. Eventually, in 1981, she made a public demand for galimony over the Malibu beach house where she had been living. King had been dating South African double partner, Ilana Kloss, for two years when the story broke. But she moved back in with Larry as a damage limitation decision after she lost nearly all of her endorsements and did the round of news studios to own the affair and blunt Marilyn's threat.

Forced to keep playing to earn a living, King lost 6-1 6-1 to Andrea Jaeger at Wimbledon in 1983 and we hear Dan Maskell wonder about the significance of the look over her shoulder as she walked off Centre Court. Barry Davies asks her in a 1985 interview if she had been selfish in pursuing her ambitions for herself, her sport, and women. But she insists she hadn't been selfish enough. In order to prevent Ilana from walking away, King made Larry agree to a divorce in 1987, which she said was painful because they were still friends.

She also put back, as a commentator and a coach and Serena Williams recalls the debt she owes to Billie Jean. We hear how she beat her eating disorder through therapy and found 45 years of happiness with Ilana. They married and stood as godparents to Larry's two children with his new wife. All has worked out (in a rather rushed wrap-up) and King is proud of what she has achieved on all levels, including completing her history degree in May 2026. She is fully entitled to, as she is one of the most remarkable human beings of recent times.

No one has done more for their sport than Billie Jean King. However, her efforts have also inspired the rise of other women's sports, as a montage in the closing remarks attests. Her legacy will endure, although she is right to conclude by saying that each generation has to build on what came before, as nothing gets done by resting on past deeds. In sporting terms, Margaret Court, Serena Williams, and Martina Navratilova all surpassed her record of 12 Grand Slam singles titles. Court also pips her for overall Slam titles, although only the Australian Ladies Doubles elududed her in amassing. But King won her 39 titles while fighting against second-class citizenship by launching the Virginia Slims revolution and holding the women's tour together so that everyone got to benefit from her efforts. This is the kind of thing that doesn't go on honours boards. But Garbus and Wolff have set the record straight in this fine portrait of a fierce competitor who made grit graceful.

It was inevitable that so much time would be devoted to the Riggs match, even though it has already been explored in James Erskine's The Battle of the Sexes (2013) and Valerie Faris and Jonathan Drayton's Battle of the Sexes (2017), with the perfectly cast Emma Stone and Steve Carell. Editor Joshua L. Pearson compresses it expertly and makes telling use of the splendid archive material. But what makes this so impactful is King's rapport with the camera, as she vividly relives the big moments in her sporting and private life with clarity, wit, and, honesty. She's aware of the difference she has made, but there's no ego on display. There are regrets (although the link with Big Tobacco is rather brushed under the carpet) and she has clearly not forgiven Marilyn Barnett, even though she committed suicide at the age of 49. Her love of life and enthusiasm for tennis are infectious. Yet it has been the will to win that has driven Billie Jean King to succeed, perhaps even more than her feminism, and she is still chuntering to herself on court, even during a gentle knock-up with Ilana. Long may she continue to do so.