A young woman, Thelma, moves to Oslo, Norway to attend college. Thelma spends a lot of time by herself and doesn’t have any friends until she meets another woman named Anja, who she falls in love with. Thelma knows she can’t be with Anja because of her religious background. Every time Thelma gets too close with Anja, she starts to have these seizures. Thelma was born with these inexplicable powers.
Blaine: Joachim Trier had directed a lot of dramas in the past and he was interested in making a supernatural movie. Joachim grew up on Japanese comic books that were about supernatural elements and that is what inspired him to make a supernatural movie. Joachim wanted the story to be suspenseful and that was a challenge at first. It wasn’t considered being a love story in the beginning. Joachim did a lot of research on psychogenic epilepsy by talking to doctors. One of the doctors told Joachim that a lot of people who would come in and participate in the psychogenic non-epileptic seizure group were women with religious backgrounds. They were also lesbians and they had a difficult time not only confessing to people, but also to themselves that they preferred the company of women and that caused this tremendous amount of stress in their lives. Joachim was very amazed by that, so a lot of changes were made to the script and the story focussed more on conflict. The story worked better for Joachim when Thelma has a conflict with herself and her father.
Joachim was nervous if he wouldn’t find the right woman to play Thelma. She would not only have to pull off a good performance, but also have to deal with snakes and do water stunts. And then he met Eili Harboe (The Wave), who hadn’t done much acting, but Joachim felt that she had what he needed for the character. Eili was lucky enough to read the script before she was cast and she immediately fell in love with it. Eili felt that the character, Thelma, was both strong and vulnerable and she felt honored to be apart of a project with that type of character. Eili had no problem with snakes and could handle them because she likes them, but she said if it was rats she would have a problem. Eili had to do swimming and diving lessons and went through seizure therapy to portray the epileptic seizures that Thelma experiences in the film.
Joachim said he makes movies because he wants to create situations, moods and he wants to show people an experience. There are some scenes where Thelma gets trapped underwater. They had to build some structures where Eili had to swim underneath and kind of get trapped underwater. Stunt divers would be there just incase if she needed help getting out. Joachim almost thought that they may have pushed it too far because of that, but it all turned out great. Joachim Trier didn’t tell the extras at the college that Eili Harboe was going to have a seizure during a scene and when she was on the floor flinching, they actually were concerned that one of the people on set was having a seizure.
Kaya Wilkins plays Thelma’s love interest, Anja, and she had never been in a movie before because she is a musician. The reason why she was hired to play Anja was because Joachim believes that as a musician she has written a lot of personal material in her songs and she used that type of energy to get into emotional states in her acting.
“Thelma” was the first film allowed to be shot at the opera house in Oslo, Norway and the choreographers who perform there were nice enough to do some of their dance moves for the film. The opera house is the scene where Thelma realizes that there is something going on between her and Anja that is more than friendship and that kind of scares her. Anja tells Thelma that she broke up with her boyfriend and I think the reason why she did it was because she knows she has a huge crush on Thelma. Anja tries to get more intimate with Thelma in that scene. Through the film, Thelma is trying to ignore these sexual feelings she feels for Anja, but the thing is that these feelings she feels are strong and she can’t help it. Thelma continues to ignore her feelings until her powers act up and cause Anja to disappear.
At the beginning of the film it shows a flashback of when Thelma was 4 and her father points his gun at her as they are hunting for deer. Thelma’s father thinks her abilities are some kind of curse. Thelma killed her baby brother by accident when she was 4 because she didn’t know how to control her powers yet and her brother’s crying bothered her a lot. Thelma has spent years fearing her powers and letting her father get to her instead of learning how to use and control them. Thelma has had to do what her father says and have her be someone she is not. In her sleep, Thelma manages to use her powers to set her father on fire while he is out on the lake. He can jump in the water and put the fire out, but every time he tries to go on the surface he burns. In the end Thelma learns that she doesn’t have to be afraid of these powers as long as she can use them properly. Thelma also learns that she’ll never be happy or feel calm if her dad is around. She realizes that deep down inside her there is this feeling of hate she has always felt for her father. She finally accepts herself for who she is and knows what she wants out of life and that is to be with Anja and that’s what brings her back. Thelma is free at the end and realizes she just wants to be happy.
