Pain of Love

Scenes from the life of Kirsten, covering her childhood and teenage years to early adulthood. How she discovers sex and men; how one guy after the other turns out to be a disappointment; how her life slowly becomes a lukewarm hell of depression and despair. Kirsten’s life is closely – but not too closely – modelled on that of Malmros’s wife, making Pain of Love a pendant to Sorrow and Joy. Here, many of the experiences and dilemmas the later work only alludes to are examined in detail. And while Sorrow and Joy finds it in itself to end on a note of unquiet grace, Pain of Love is a down into the abyss – Kirsten’s sense of loneliness, inadequacy, smallness in a world that seems so demanding and vast is simply crushing. Pain of Love is one of the most devastating, excruciating, troublesome, exhilarating, enlightening experiences within Malmros’s oeuvre.