Seite - 129 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 02/02

Beyond Cinematic Stereotypes | 129www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 123–140 her emotions. She is often filmed in close-ups or medium close-ups that high- light her facial features and her emotional development. As with many other female characters in films, her transformation is largely related to questions of body and sexuality and who she is as a sexual being. Inger also formulates some of the central ideas of the film. In a key scene, set at the parsonage late in the evening in low-lit rooms that metaphorically express the shadows in Inger and Stig’s marriage, Inger tells her husband that she is tired of his incessant talk of sin. According to Inger there is no such thing as sin. For one night she manages to convince her husband to let go of his restraints and give in to a night of pas- sion, but the next morning, Stig again turns away from his wife and asks for divine forgiveness. When Stig fires Daniel, Inger exposes Stig’s hypocrisy and finally leaves her husband. The spiritual turn in the film is directly characterized through Inger’s development, illustrating how it leads to conflict but also to freedom and a new kind of community in the form of the loving community the choir grows into. And finally, there is Gabriella, Conny’s abused wife. In many ways, Gabriella is the classical woman as victim. Everyone in the village knows that Conny beats his wife, but no one seems interested or able to do something about it. The ex- ception is Lena, but she is physically unable to stand up to Conny. Daniel tries to stop Conny on several occasions, but instead is severely beaten himself. How- ever, being a choir member entails a change for Gabriella as well. In what might be considered the strongest scene of the film, a scene bathed in light, Gabriella sings a song that Daniel has written for her. The song is performed at a concert for the village and Conny is in the audience. In the song Gabriella states that her life is her own and she wants to live it freely. The scene cuts between Gabriella on stage and Conny in the audience. Conny, as can be expected, reacts badly to the song, abusing Gabriella again after the concert, but in the end Gabriella leaves him and also reports him to the police. Thus, for Gabriella, too, the spirit- uality awakened by Daniel’s ideas and the choir leads to a profound transforma- tion: she breaks with her role as victim and instead takes control of her own life. Again, this is a process in which the community in the form of the choir plays a role, as does the savior character in the film, Daniel. The central female characters in As It Is in Heaven (2004) are all fairly com- mon female film characters – the pastor’s wife, the victim, the sexualized wom- an – but taken together they offer fascinatingly different female voices, placed at the center of the film. On one hand, one might argue that because the film has a male lead and the female characters are all related to this character and partly dependent on him, they lose some of their agency. On the other hand, the savior figure in the film also depends on the three women and they change him as much as he changes them.