Summary
The Wrong Track mixes sharp humor with a look at the messy realities of adulthood, encouraging viewers to embrace imperfections.
Adulthood is complex—at least, that’s the main message of the Norwegian Netflix film The Wrong Track. I also believe that labeling this movie solely as a comedy is a mistake; it is more serious than it appears.
The story follows Emilie (Ada Eide), a divorced mother struggling to make ends meet. She has little drive to do anything of substance. When plumbing problems cause havoc in her home, she temporarily stays at her brother’s house. She has a testy relationship with her daughter’s father, Joachim (Christian Rubeck – as seen in The Trip, also on Netflix), who believes her lifestyle is not a good benchmark for parenting.
As for the brother, Gjermund (Trong Fausa), he also believes that his sister Emilie is not doing what’s best for herself and challenges her to partake in a grueling 54 km ski race called the Birken, offering to teach her how to ski so she can prove she is not a loser. However, he is facing problems of his own; he and his wife, Silje (Marie Blokhus), are struggling to conceive a child and have invested heavily in treatments, which is causing a lot of stress in their marriage.
Can you see why labeling this as a comedy may have been too hasty? Unless IMDB did not receive the memo. Either way, there’s a lot to understand from The Wrong Track that surprised me and encouraged me to be self-reflective.
Being an adult is messy—we spend most of our lives figuring out the connections we value: the friends we want to keep, the person with whom we desire a long-lasting relationship, and the careers worth pursuing. Most movies these days sell the dream: flashy romance, high-flying careers, and straightforward relationships. For 90% of us, that’s simply not reality.
Director Hallvar Witzø proposes an absorbing narrative in The Wrong Track: Accept your shortcomings and the fractured nature of your life and move forward. This salient message allows the characters to accept the messiness for what it is, embrace it, and find solutions rather than self-sabotage or delve into the self-defeatist attitude that comes with failures.
The script is also balanced. Although I was half expecting Emilie to be the central character, the story focuses on all four characters and sells a good sibling story in which both siblings deal with personal problems while supporting each other. Romance is not the central theme, which strengthens the validity of the story.
There is comedy as well. While I have emphasized that this is “not just a comedy,” several moments arise that are relatable to an adult who has endured many embarrassing situations in their life.
From a filmmaking perspective, I was particularly impressed by the lengths the director went to use the landscape around them, especially when we reach the 54km race, with sweeping shots of snowy hills and snow slopes and spanning shots. There’s a clear attempt to appreciate the nature at hand, and it comes off well in the cinematography.
As a final point, it’s worth noting that this is a direct remake of the Swedish film Off Track, which was released on Netflix in November 2022. The narrative is nearly identical, and we gave it a favorable 3-star rating. So, it would be intriguing to see if any viewers preferred the Norwegian version over the Swedish one. Netflix tends to recycle the same stories in different languages, as seen with Honeymoon Crasher and Honeymoon with My Mother.
Either way, my only experience with this story is with The Wrong Track, and while it did not blow my mind, it encouraged me to be self-reflective and thoughtful about my adult life, which means the director fulfilled their objective.
