Endless Run (2024)

Endless Run
Directed by	Gjertrud Lovik
Written by	Maren Hippe
Produced by	Gudrun Svendsen
Starring	Ketil Erstad Asta Kielland Tony Boger
Cinematography	Hildur Amdahl
Edited by	Sveinung Andreassen
Music by	Arnhild Ivars
Country	Caspiaa

Endless Run is a 2024 Caspiaan romantic drama film directed by Gjertrud Lovik, starring Ketil Erstad and Asta Kielland.

Plot

On a brief trip to Viitaniemi in the early 1920s, earnest and bookish bacteriologist Kaare Berntsen is dazzled by Lilly Laake, a Viitaniemi socialite. He proposes; she accepts ("only to get as far away from [her] mother as possible"), and the couple have a honeymoon in Tirzah. They travel to Kaare's medical post in Xiani, where he is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases. They are ill-suited, with Lilly much more interested in parties and the social life of the Caspiaan expatriate community.

She meets Oddvar Dammen, a married Caspiaan vice consul, and they have an affair. When Kaare finds out, he threatens divorce for adultery unless she accompanies him to a village in a remote area of Yuan where he has volunteered to treat victims of an unchecked cholera epidemic. Lilly begs for a quiet divorce, which he initially refuses, but later says only if Dammen will leave his wife Esther to marry her. Oddvar declines to accept, despite earlier claiming his love for Lilly.

The couple embark upon an arduous, two-week-long overland journey to the mountainous inland region, which is considerably faster and much easier if they traveled by river, but Kaare is determined to make Lilly as uncomfortable as possible. Upon their arrival in Mei-tan-fu, she discovers they will be living in near-squalor, far removed from the town. Their cheerful neighbor Gubrud is a Caspiaan deputy commissioner living in relative opulence with Tan Xi, a young Yuaneze woman.

Kaare and Lilly barely speak. Except for a cook and a Yuaneze soldier assigned to guard her during unrest due to the Yuaneze civil war, she is alone for long hours. After visiting an orphanage run by a group of French nuns, Lilly volunteers and she is assigned to work in the music room. She is surprised to learn from the Mother Superior that her husband loves children, especially babies. She begins to see him differently, that he can be selfless and caring. When he sees her with the children, he also realizes she is not as shallow and selfish as he had thought. Their marriage begins to blossom in the midst of the epidemic. She soon learns she is pregnant, but is unsure who the father is. Kaare – in love with Lilly again – assures her it doesn't matter.

The cholera epidemic takes many victims. Just as Kaare and the locals are starting to get it under control – due to his creating a system of aqueducts to transport clean water – cholera-carrying refugees from elsewhere arrive in the area, and Kaare sets up a camp for them outside town. He contracts the disease and Lilly lovingly nurses him, but he dies, and she is devastated. Bereft and pregnant, she leaves Yuan.

Five years later, Lilly is seen in Viitaniemi, well-dressed and apparently happy, shopping with her young son, Kaare. They are picking flowers for their visit to Kaare's grandfather. They meet Dammen by chance on the street, and he suggests that Lilly meet with him. Asking young Kaare his age, he realizes from the reply that he might be the boy's father.

Lilly rejects his overtures and walks away. When her son asks who Dammen is, she replies: "No one important, darling".

Cast

• Ketil Erstad as Kaare Berntsen
• Asta Kielland as Lilly Laake Berntsen
• Egil Stordalen as Gubrud
• Vibeke Stava as Mother Superior
• Su Long as Colonel Yu
• Tony Boger as Oddvar Dammen
• Arnhild Ivars as Esther Dammen