Weightless (Vægtløs, 2025) ‘San Sebastian’ Movie Review: Sincere Portrait of Teenage Inadequacy Marred By Some Shakiness

Emilie Thalund’s “Weightless” (Vægtløs, 2025) kicks off with Lea (Marie Helweg Augustsen) left at a summer camp that functions as a health retreat. Fifteen and battling weight issues, Lea hopes to cut down, slip into a salubrious practice. Even as she makes friends, a nagging feeling of inadequacy registered in her body keeps tailing her. The film etches a trajectory of how she views herself, how the relationships she makes frame and reframe her self-worth. Often, she negates her happiness, attempting to endure all the softly disguised calumny until she can bear no longer. The equation of physical appearance to confidence and joy is a fraught one, riddled with a slew of aches, discomfort, and learning to lean into one’s own skin.

A deeply empathetic storyteller, Emilie Thalund never cuts away from Lea’s perspective. The film stays intimately anchored in her anxieties and anguish, seeking to define and dignify her even as she unravels under the weight of crippling self-esteem. The space of her expression stays intact despite a constant battering by humiliation and body type aspersions. Lea may not lash out immediately or openly challenge, but she simmers with anger within.

Her repressed expression posits its own fierce resistance, even as she tries to adhere to the various routines at the retreat. But there’s great churn and pain she goes through, pangs of doubt in her skin. Augustsen richly draws out all the pain and shame in a journey arcing towards self-affirmation. Gradual beats are traced with generosity and humble attention. We encounter an inner journey delineated with care and subtle understanding.

The gaze refuses to tightly ascribe binarised niceness or spite to a character. Lea is often envious of her roommate, Sasha (Ella Paaske), who’s slim and unhesitant in demanding space and what she thinks ought to be hers. This is a girl who knows what she wants and is supremely sure of herself. Lea is more judgmental of herself, struggling to climb out of the terrible pits of rejection, both directed by others and striking deep within. There’s a lot of the negativity she has internalised. But how much can she free herself of this clamping stricture?

Weightless (2025) — A still from “Weightless” (*Vægtløs*, 2025)

She receives kindness but also the inveterate shade on her weight. The fact that her emotions do matter, her quest for love and affirmation cannot be dismissed, takes shape with moving, resonant power. We are nudged to look deep into what she holds back tentatively, the thrusting need beneath the polite, muffled front. The bisections of her desire and insistence on attention provide the film’s emotional contours. She craves it, but not without imposing herself too bluntly. She retreats and tucks herself far away and out of others’ prying curiosity, even while she seeks them to get to know her. How should she project herself without coming off as too desperate? It’s a constant dilemma illuminated with piercing honesty and wrenching transparency in Augustsen’s performance.

Sasha is loving and caring, despite the occasional hurtful implications. The film carries both the goodness and favourable, seamier sides of humans. Lea finds herself increasingly drawn to the instructor at the retreat, Rune (Joachim Fjelstrup). The man wields charm, attracting everyone like a strong magnet. He’s affectionate, teasing, and gets the job done through an easy-going affability.

When he directs attention to Sasha, Lea tries to stifle a stab of envy. Why can’t she be the absolute vessel for his adoration? Rune’s gestures prime it as almost feasible until it twists into a grotesque, misguided act of exploitation. Lea falls for it only to be shattered thereafter. Fjelstrup puts on an effective smarminess that gets its hooks into Lea, making her surrender all her defences. She starts to believe in the pretty lies he sold. The illusion snakes up to consume her whole, refusing to leave her unscathed.

Despite the blooming pockets of hope and promise, darkness throws itself in. The niceness of people is shed and regained in a constant interplay. Lea finds herself emotionally churned and doubting. Amidst the gaslighting, Lea is heartbroken. She struggles to recover with his waning attention, his shooting back to regular attitudes. She can’t square it with the jolting intensity of the incident.

“Weightless” delivers this with bracing impact, an emotional severity that singes and smears the screen. Propped by its luminous lead, this film accumulates an unshakable effect, though there are parts one wishes were etched sharply. Where’s the fuller repercussion of the definitive incident that spurs trauma? The film should have pursued it more head-on, instead of quietly tying it up towards a liberating close. Skimping the scope for greater daring reduces the film from being imperative.