Showtimes
Annenberg Theater
Review by Valerie Milano
Palm Springs, CA (The Hollywood Times) 1/3/26 – At this year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival, No Comment lands with biting precision and uncomfortable relevance. Directed by Petter Naess, the film is a smart, unsettling political satire inspired by a real-life Norwegian scandal, and it never lets the audience forget how thin the line is between image control and moral collapse.
Naess, speaking from Oslo during our interview, describes No Comment as “a movie about the will for power, how much you’re willing to sacrifice to stay in office.” That idea becomes the film’s engine. Loosely based on the true story of a former Norwegian prime minister whose husband engaged in massive stock trading while she held sensitive information, the film dramatizes not just the scandal itself, but the machinery that spins it away.
The title phrase, no comment, becomes a chilling refrain. In today’s political climate, silence is rarely neutral, and Naess makes that point with clarity. “It’s important to put a light and a camera where the politician doesn’t want it,” he told me. The film imagines what happens behind closed doors, what is said, justified, or strategically ignored when the microphones are off. That imagined space is where No Comment finds both its comedy and its sting.
Click below for our exclusive interview:
What makes the satire so effective is its restraint. Rather than broad caricature, Naess focuses on behavior: adults who know better, making conscious mistakes, then pretending nothing happened. “We know you’re lying,” he said with a wry smile, “but you keep lying. That is funny and sad at the same time.” The humor lands because it’s rooted in recognition, not just of politicians, but of systems that protect power at all costs.
The film also smartly shifts focus to the spin doctors, the architects of distraction. Naess draws a parallel to Wag the Dog, noting how narratives are engineered to redirect blame. In No Comment, responsibility is deflected from the prime minister to her husband, straining a marriage already buckling under public scrutiny. The result is both intimate and universal: a story about a couple, yes, but also about how institutions devour individuals when survival becomes the priority.
Released in Norway just weeks before an election (against the wishes of those involved), No Comment sparked intense political coverage, more from newsrooms than arts critics. In real life, the politician lost. In the film, she wins. That contrast underscores the film’s central warning: when leaders cling too tightly to power, accountability becomes collateral damage.
Naess is clear that his goal isn’t to preach. “I wanted to entertain the audience,” he said, “but also force politicians to think about taking the job more seriously.” For audiences, especially younger voters, the takeaway is sharper: pay attention. People are watching, and trust must be earned, not managed.
No Comment is a confident, darkly funny satire that respects its audience’s intelligence. It invites laughter, then asks you to sit with what that laughter reveals. In Palm Springs, where thoughtful, engaged viewers are the norm, the film feels especially at home, provocative, timely, and impossible to shrug off.
Verdict: ★★★★☆
A political satire that understands power not as an abstraction, but as a very human flaw, with consequences that are anything but funny.
