‘When a woman enters my hair salon, she wants to be transformed into a younger, better version of herself. More elegant, more interesting. She wants to be a movie star, not someone named Axel.” Hairdresser Frans knows for sure: a curler named after a man is not going to conquer the world. And so protagonist Axel Byvang (Morten Hee Andersen) comes up with another name for his brand new invention: ‘Carmen Curlers’.
Well. The electric curler. Who makes over there what about a TV series? Well, the Danish public broadcaster DR. Together with screenwriter Mette Heeno (Snow Angels, Splitting Up Together) and an entire team invested heavily in this true story about the Dane Arne Bybjerg Pedersen, a radio salesman from the provincial town of Kalundborg who introduced the electric hair curler in 1963. With success, the first season of Carmen Curlers, which aired in Denmark early last year, was an instant hit. In the meantime, the series – the second season was recently on Danish TV – has already won several awards, and rightly so. Pedersen’s exceptional story has been filmed in an extremely entertaining way. Pedersen is called Axel Byvang in the series (and he looks a lot like the real Pedersen). In addition, hairdresser Frans (Nicolai Jørgensen) and Birthe Windfeld (Maria Rossing), a tough farmer’s wife who runs a farm, are the main characters in this light-hearted drama.
Sweltering hot laundry
From the first episode we follow Birthe who, when her husband Jorgen turns out to be seriously ill, starts looking for work to pay for his expensive treatment. After working on the farm for twenty-five years, she approaches Axel who, experimenting with his electric hair curler, pays no attention to his ailing radio and TV business. In a bitter tone she forces Axel to accept her: ‘I plant, sow, plow and harvest (…) I take care of cattle, do the washing, do the laundry and cook. And my children are clean, fed and polite. Do you really think I can’t sell televisions?’ Axel changes tack and meanwhile risks everything to sell his ‘brilliant invention’. Setbacks cause him a lot of headaches. Indeed, there are quite a few problems with his new product. Being able to twist a curl in your hair at home in ten minutes is of course nice, but what if boiling hot wax drips from such a pin onto your scalp? No, distributors have little interest in such a strange product, but Axel does not give up.
Delusions of grandeur
Indeed, Axel suffers from delusions of grandeur, but, as was also true of inventor Arne Bybjerg Pedersen: only a madman can conquer the world. Ultimately, the real Carmen Curlers became a great success – the curler factory, built in 1964, was one of the fastest growing companies worldwide in the 1960s, employing 3,500 people in its heyday. That’s not the case yet in this first season Carmen Curlers, partly because script writer Heeno mainly focuses on the emotional development of the main characters. Axel appears to have been bullied a lot as a red-haired boy at an elite boarding school – he did not get his nickname ‘Golden Axel’ just like that. Birthe, who will eventually lead the personnel policy in the factory, also has to break away from a conservative environment, just like hairdresser Frans who, after some trepidation, comes out of the closet. The scenes in which Nicolai Jørgensen as the tormented Frans has his first sexual experiences with a man are extremely moving. And there are many characters in this series who escape the oppressive Brussels sprouts culture of the 1950s.
Carmen Curlers not only tells the story of the electric curler, but also represents a period of economic growth (a refrigerator, washing machine and TV for everyone) and social progress. It is this broader story, in combination with excellent acting, strong staging and playful editing and camera work that creates a convincing and, above all, hopeful picture of the times. No more boring hairnets and papillotes, twist that curl in your hair and dance to ‘Love Me Do’!
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