A WARM SERVING OF SCANDINAVIAN-STYLE HUMOR.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

YOU KNOW how Garrison Keillor is always making jokes about Norwegian bachelor farmers on ``A Prairie Home Companion''? ``Kitchen Stories'' is one long Garrison Keillor joke.

Funnier than Keillor is these days, though. But it takes awhile to get there.

Written and directed by Norwegian-born, Stockholm-educated Bent Hamer, the movie belongs to a very small subgenre that might be called kitchen sink surrealism - nothing in it seems improbable (indeed, the first half of the movie is so dryly, prosaically observational it borders on tedium), yet it's all weirdly peculiar just the same.

The movie probably plays on attitudinal differences between Swedes and Norwegians that resonate deeper for Scandinavian audiences. But most of us can get the gist. In the 1950s, of course, Sweden was a hotbed of efficient modern design, and the film makes great fun of the culture's dour mania for scientifically examining and improving common household functions.

Having pretty much exhausted even the hearty homemaking capacities of Swedish housewives, the country's Home Research Institute makes a deal with its less-advanced neighbor to the west. Swedish observers will be sent to the homes of, yes, Norwegian bachelor farmers to watch how these men without women conduct themselves in the kitchen. For the NBFs, this unprecedented invasion of privacy is made more palatable by the compensation of a new horse or something - and by the ironclad rule that, although the Swedish guest must have full and unhindered access to the cooking area, no communication of any kind is to be made between the two men, lest it alter NBF behavior and skew the study data.

This also enables the generally misanthropic Norwegians to avoid the discomfort of hospitality.

All Swedish observers come equipped with their own two-tone green proto-Airstreams to sleep, eat and be homesick in, and glandularly enhanced high-chair contraptions from which to look down on the exciting food-making activity.

Trouble is, in the case of our mousy Swedish hero Folke (Tomas Norstrom), his grizzled NBF, Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), got cold feet immediately after signing up for the experiment (he needs a new horse, but not, apparently, that badly). So, after days of refusing to let the foreigner in, Isak stubbornly avoids performing much in the way of food preparation in the designated area.

As the holiday season snowily approaches, however, the inevitable occurs. As the two lonely sons of Odin grow incrementally but rewardingly closer, we learn why people so similar possess such different attitudes (five years of Nazi occupation vs. neutrally sitting out World War II has something to do with it).

By nature, much of ``Kitchen Stories'' unfolds as a silent comedy. The pacing we associate with classic slapstick, however, is nowhere in evidence. We're talking Nordic wintertime speed - not quite glacial, but ... .

To compensate, Hamer inserts some of that design ingenuity he must have picked up at that Swedish film school. Kooky shapes, outre perspectives, droll compositions and absurd camera placements lend formal complement to such single-guy activities as burning ear hairs and receiving radio transmissions through one's body while bathing.

Against all odds, it turns out, everyday life in a Scandinavian kitchen can be quite a show.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

KITCHEN STORIES - Three stars

(Not rated: language)

Starring: Joachim Calmeyer, Tomas Norstrom, Bjorn Floberg, Reine Brynolfsson.

Director: Bent Hamer.

Running time: 1 hr. 35 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.; South Coast Village, Santa Ana.

In a nutshell: Droll to just this side of arid Scandinavian comedy about Swedish efficiency experts trying to objectively observe the kitchen habits of single Norwegians in the 1950s. Turns warm and funny, eventually.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

A Swedish efficiency expert (Joachim Calmeyer, left) studies a Norwegian bachelor (Tomas Norstrom) in ``Kitchen Stories.''