This was among my favorites of films I saw at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. From Norwegian writer/director Bent Hamer this a wonderfully quirky and surrealistic dry comedy. Odd Horten (Baard Owe) is a button down, dedicated locomotive conductor who at the age of 67 is making his final run before retirement. He is unmarried but has an opportunity for romance and a possible wife to share his retirement years with but he is unsure of how to adapt to retirement after a long dedicated career that took him from coal trains to super speed electric rail travel. You meet a delightful variety of characters in this character driven film. Like his name of Odd, he is an odd eccentric, always very proper in dress and mannerism and he constantly finds himself in odd situations. We also meet his aging nursing home bound mother, a special lady friend, his fellow locomotive drivers who throw a retirement party for him, a tavern keeper, the wife of his tobacconist, a man who wants to buy his boat and many more throughout this strangely wonderful film. Veteran actor Espen Skjonberg plays a retired diplomat who befriends Odd in the middle of the night. Skjonberg is great in this role and it's a great role in itself that leads to a series of the some of the film's more memorable scenes. Owe is fantastic in a role in which he basically has very little to do with very little range of emotion but it works. This film is like some Norwegian acid trip. I would give it an 9.0 out of 10 and recommend it.
