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Odd Horton is a Norwegian train driver, but he is retiring now at the age of 67, after nearly 40 years service. He is a methodical man, ingrained in his habits. Now suddenly, he has stopped working and has no structure to his life any more. Without this guidance he is at a loss, but he gradually starts to do things that he has never done before -- at first only small things. And they don't always go right for him, as he experiments in this new world of uncertainty.
At the municipal swimming baths, he somehow manages to stay there after the place has closed for the night; he surreptitiously starts to swim naked; but then two young women come in; not noticing him (in an Olympic pool) they start swimming naked too, and then kissing one another. Horten gets quietly out of the pool and goes to the changing room to put his clothes on. When he does so he hesitates over his own shoes, and we soon see him wearing a pair of women's red boots -- presumably belonging to one of the girls he saw in the pool.
There is no particular transgender overtone to this, and it is just one of numerous increasingly surreal elements in the film. He is wearing them in the next scene, outside, where he helps a man who seems to have gone to sleep in the street, but after that we don't see them again.
His name is Odd Horten -- Odd is a common enough first name in Norway although the director is said to have been aware of the ambiguity and Horten is indeed a little odd. It's an interesting, and very unusual film.
HF February 2011
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