Brave New Love Review | Maria Bäck’s Frank, Biting Plunge Into Love’s Boundaries Is A Sublime Festival Discovery

Maria Bäck’s Brave New Love crashes on the scene as one of the most fascinating, jagged explorations of marriage, love, relationships and motherhood in a long time. Mottled with shame, lust and guilt, how does a woman who’s married with a kid learn to navigate desire that suddenly appears frighteningly yet thrillingly expansive? Does she accept or retreat? Can there be a space in between where she’s more prone to be?

Premiering in the main competition section at Locarno Film Festival 2026, Brave New Love is intimate, daring, funny and acerbic in the same breath. Bäck is willing to let her heroine, Kate (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen), wander freely through an entire gamut of doubt and self-expression. A hypnotherapist, Kate is immediately romantically struck by a stranger, Andreas (Anders Danielsen Lie). The staging of the scene is amusing and yet matter-of-fact. Both are naked, amidst changing into fresh clothes after a swim. The opening is an immediate headrush of an affair Kate has with Andreas for three years while straddling an uncomplaining marital life with her husband, Orla (Simon Sears) and their teenage daughter, Athena (Noemi Carbone Mannov). She admits that she gradually feels like someone else now even as she falls deeper and deeper into the throes of the affair. It’s when he suddenly declares that he’ll be relocating for his new job her dazed state splinters. Bäck’s narrative structuring is clever. Julius Krebs Damsbo’s edit initially holds back on certain critical nuggets of the affair, reserving them for gradual revelation.

The Swedish-Danish filmmaker, who’s also written the screenplay, never veers to judging Kate, her impulses or choices. They might be errant and invite censure from conventional circles, but Kate is accorded the dignity and glory of setting out on her own wild-spirited journey without constantly having to worry about safety nets. Yes, the concern always lurks in the background. But it amplifies especially after the lover exits the scene, when geographical distance intervenes. The ache seems to climb to a clobbering intensity, compelling her to acknowledge and confront conflicting feelings.

Brave New Love sees through the fine-filigreed latticework of emotions and feelings regarding love and desire with precision and unerring honesty. Bäck has no delusions or pretensions about her heroine’s dilemma. She brings all the awkwardness, discomfort and unyielding distress of difficult questions swirling around both the two men in her life Kate loves. How can she choose? The film gently asks her to consider this tussles with none of the usual hectoring or handwringing accompanying a romantic triangle. Kate is clearly stuck. She has no clue how she should proceed. Shorn of Andreas, she falls back on a church knitting club, a track that infuses the film with levity and serves as window to all the social prejudices, denunciations and moral reckoning that’s thrust on women who’ve transgressed.

Through the group discussions, Kate gets a shot at opening up. Snippets from the affair poke out. She concedes to feeling pride and joy in having abstained from sex with Andreas. With him, her sense felt “heightened”. But there was always a dividing line, she emphasises. Rarely have they kissed even. Is chastity the sole barometer of cheating? Some of the women in the group are shocked by Kate’s confession of the extramarital romance, especially since she has a child. Some lambast her for being unmotherly, another wonders if she’s gotten insane. There are also aspersions flung that her husband is perfect, handling domestic duties well, which is why she can afford to be reckless. At home, the two are cordial but seldom snuck out time for sincere conversation. Yet, Kate can’t deny her love for him. The fifteen years of marriage weren’t misspent. She doesn’t grudge that. Neither can she turn away from the flood of feelings Andreas sparked. She ponders if she’s deceiving her daughter as well.

The “circle of shame”, which the church sisterhood dubs themselves as, eventually enables her to work through the mesh of inner judgement, crippling uncertainty and staggered inability to take a definitive stand on her clashing relationships. In a revelatory turn, Kathrine Thorborg Johansen summons vulnerability and emotional nakedness with complete, bracing candour. She submits fully to the confusion, being buffeted by waves of heartbreak and self-questioning. Brave New Love never loses sight of its introspective core, well-padded by wistfulness and barging, unruly desires. The ever-reliable Danielsen Lie beautifully holds forth in latter sections with a calm, anchoring presence. He brings answers and a measure of healing and possibility.

Unlike films of its ilk, Brave New Love accommodates greater generosity, compassion and an inclination to be variegated and not shut in. Bäck orchestrates the path up to a genuinely moving coda, capped by a dazzling dream sequence combing together every stray motif and suggestion. This film is one of Locarno’s most radiant findings.