If
you visit Sun Valley, you can easily enjoy vintage performances from Sonja Henie,
Glenn Miller, Dorothy Dandridge, and the Nicholas Brothers, because the 1941
Hollywood musical Sun Valley Serenade plays
24-hours on a local resort TV station. Unfortunately, you might not want to see
that much of Henie after watching her new bio-pic. There is nothing flattering about
the portrait of Henie that emerges in Anne Sewitsky’s Sonja: The White Swan, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Henie
was a record-breaking world and Olympic champion, who certainly never lacked
for confidence. She basically talked and skated her way into a contract at 20th
Century Fox and then proceeded to save the cash-strapped studio with her
rom-com hits. She was the Ethel Merman of frozen water, but she wasn’t very
nice to be around.
According
to Mette Marit Bølstad & Andrea Markusson’s screenplay, the early years in
Hollywood are a non-stop party for Henie, but career setbacks, family
squabbles, and financial problems make the 1950s much less fun. However, in
just about every instance, Henie is to blame.
Rarely
has a film ever shown such unbridled hostility to its subject. As portrayed in White Swan, Henie is not merely a
shallow, selfish, self-centered prima donna. She is also a Nazi-namedropper,
who projects an unsettling Lolita-esque sexual persona, while carrying on a
decidedly unhealthy love-hate relationship with her brother Leif. Arguably, the
film lets her off somewhat easy for the way she sweet talked Goebbels into
approving German distribution for her films. On the other hand, in White Swan she never seems to understand
why her connection to the National Socialists is problematic, whereas in real-life
she appeared in the anti-Nazi film Everything
Happens at Night and supported the American war effort and the “Little Norway”
military training base for Norwegian refugees, so maybe she wasn’t as bad as
the film suggests.
Regardless,
Ine Marie Wilmann’s lead performance is just a jaw-dropping spectacle of hot
mess antics and meltdowns. She makes Henie look like an absolutely horrible person,
but her commitment is beyond question. She goes all-in, all the time. It is
exhausting to watch, but it is undeniably impressive.
On
the other end of the spectrum, Eldar Skar is relentlessly whiny as the
emasculated Leif Henie. At one point, Henie calls Connie, her fictionalized
secretary/punching bag, “mousy”—and boy, is that ever true of Valene Kane’s portrayal.
Basically, her job is to look on woefully as her boss engages in yet more
scandalous behavior. Arguably, Pål Sverre Hagen fares the best as Niels Onstad,
her childhood friend and eventual third husband, who is the only one who ever
gives Henie a good talking to.
