A Marriage on the Edge of Collapse
When Loving Adults premiered on Netflix in 2022, it joined the canon of Nordic noir with a uniquely intimate and unsettling twist. Based on Anna Ekberg’s novel Kærlighed for voksne, the film tells the story of Christian (Dar Salim) and Leonora (Sonja Richter), a married couple whose seemingly perfect suburban life unravels under the weight of lies, betrayal, and simmering resentment.
Christian, a successful businessman, begins an affair with Xenia, a younger woman who awakens in him the passion and freedom he feels his marriage has lost. Leonora, who once gave up her own career ambitions to care for their son after a serious illness, senses her husband’s betrayal and refuses to be quietly discarded. What follows is a chilling battle of wits, manipulation, and survival between two people bound by love but driven by vengeance.
Audiences were immediately drawn to the way the film framed ordinary domestic struggles—resentment, infidelity, guilt—and pushed them into the extreme. By the time blood is spilled, viewers are left wondering if the story is about love at all, or about the darker contracts that hold people together when affection has rotted away.
The Ending That Split Audiences
The climax of Loving Adults was always going to provoke debate. Leonora discovers Christian’s plan to leave her for Xenia and orchestrates a shocking turn of events: the young woman dies, and Leonora and Christian are left staring at one another, locked in a prison of shared secrets.
The final moments show the couple continuing their life together, presenting a façade of normality to the outside world. For some viewers, this was a chillingly perfect ending—the idea that marriage can survive anything, even murder, as long as appearances are maintained. Others speculated that this was only one layer of the story, and that Christian might eventually betray Leonora again, setting the cycle of violence in motion once more.
Rumors circulated online that the novel included alternate storylines, where Leonora alone escaped the marriage or where Christian turned on her in the final act. Director Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg addressed this in interviews, noting that she deliberately left the ending morally ambiguous: “We wanted the audience to ask themselves, would I stay? Would I leave? Or am I already living in this sort of prison?”
Theories somehow managed to keep the discussion going.
One theory that circulated on Reddit and within cinematic circles posited that much of the film relied on the unreliable narration of Leonora. Supporters of the theory highlighted how in certain scenes, Christian was almost cartoonishly framed as guilty, while Leonora remained hyper composed. The theory suggested that perhaps she was building the narrative for herself and then managed to convince not only herself – and perhaps Christian – that she was a victim of some gross injustice, while in reality, she was the one controlling all the strings from the very beginning.
Another theory proposed was that the film was not about infidelity but rather about control. Leonora’s control of certain situations, it was argued, was illustrative of the extreme lengths to which some people go to when their very essences have been completely swallowed by the requirements of their families. In this interpretation, Xenia was not merely the other woman but rather the woman Leonora was never able to reclaim and whose life was ultimately sacrificed.
More sinister speculations suggested that the couple’s son, who overcame a grave illness, survived due to some sort of subconscious tether. Fans have suggested that the irrational urge that Leonora had to preserve the family was a product of a long, intense fear that the child they had would die. This perspective suggests that her behavior was rooted, not merely in jealousy, but in a profound fear of losing everything that she had devoted her life to preserving.
Reflections of the Cast Regarding the Alternates
In her interviews, Sonja Richter said she enjoyed the complications of the character she played, Leonora. “She is neither a victim nor a villain” she shed light. “She is a woman who has sacrificed so much and will not be erased. To play her is to play primal survival.” Richter loved fan theories where Leonora was the true mastermind of the whole thing because of how she described her as “five steps ahead.”
On the other hand, Dar Salim was much more sympathetic toward Christian. For him, Christian is “a selfish man who, for whatever reason, has never fully grasped the consequences of his actions.” To Salim, Christian was not a monster, just a man whose weakness turned his ordinary life into a tragedy. Talking of alternate endings, he said he prefers the theatrical one because it left the viewers “squirming in their seats” which he said was the whole point of his vision– to make people unsure whether justice was served or not.
These impulses, she felt, would come across in the more complicated and seamless union of the two, which would slip into the marriage’s more authentic untidiness. Director Topsøe-Rothenborg explained that she allows her actors to explore their characters in ways that, at times, go against the script.
Additionally Added Textures In Production Notes
There is a sense of claustrophobia in about Loving Adults. Yet, a great part of it was filmed in airy, modern Danish homes. “I wanted the surroundings to feel beautiful and aspirational, to contrast with the darkness of what happens inside them,” explained Topsøe Rothenborg. The sleek kitchens, glowing gardens, and glass windows only augmented the unease: evil, it seems, doesn’t always lurk in shadow. Sometimes, it is found in the openness of suburbia.
Another fact, albeit, less known, was the fact that the adaptation almost didn’t happen. The initial novel was deemed too psychologically dark for adaptation into mainstream literature. However, with the backing of Netflix, the novel was adapted to part of its international thriller projects. Topsøe Rothenborg, in collaboration with Ekberg, worked on some of the subplots. However, she was adamant about ensuring the marriage dynamic was kept raw.
There was, of course, the actors, too. They had to mentally and physically prepare for the intimacy in their power struggles. Richter and Salim, for instance, had to work on their fight sequences. They began by treating these sequences as if they belonged to a choreographed dance as opposed to a dance of brute violence. “Every shove, every glance, was meant to reveal decades of history between them,” explained Salim.
Viewers Were Left Wanting More
“Loving Adults” opened on Netflix in April 2022, and immediately the viewers took to social media and began to debate the final chapter of the film. Some viewers thought the ending could use a sequel where Leonora and Christian try to cover up Xenia’s disappearance. Others thought a more intriguing option would be a prequel where Leonora’s mysteriously unfinished career of self-abnegation is explored. Questions flew around the internet: Can Leonora murder again? Can Christian dominate this relationship?
The conjecture is not surprising let us be honest. What is more surprising is how many people rlated to the extremes of the film. People could understand and relate to the little micro grudges, the adjustments, the fibs people told to hold a relationship together which is what this film captured. “Loving Adults” posed the theory of how a relationship would be left unexplored when the two partners are completely wrapped around each other to never let go.