An Iranian man arrives in a remote part of Norway on a bicycle, seeking to pass a series of tests to gain asylum. We're very soon disabused of the notion that this is a factual representation of the process as the tests grow increasingly more bizarre: it's a Kafkaesque satire of the Norwegian immigration system, at some turns grotesque with the lingering possibility that some of the hoops he has to jump through may be not that far removed from real life after all, and at others very funny in their sheer ludicrosity, such as when the panel of judges closely watches every step of the applicant's attempt to make a sandwich in the approved Norwegian fashion. Droll and salutary too, House of Norway is a rare case of a film that would also well withstand being remade for any other market because of its wealth of culturally-specific references that its comedy is dependent on, and its universal applicability with regard to ideas of nationality and the immigrant experience.
6/10
