The Wrong Track ends at a Christmas party where everyone in a young woman’s life comes together, delighted for her specifically. The film about a young mother who needs to get her life back together is a light-hearted but high-spirited story that’ll leave you excited about trying to find your way back on the right track (you know I had to). The film follows Emilie, who drinks to drown her sorrows at night and doesn’t know what she’s doing at her day job. In truth, the reason Emilie has to be sober during the day is to be with her daughter, who lives alternately between her and her ex-husband, Joachim. After Emilie’s toilet breaks and floods the whole house, she has no choice but to leave her daughter Lili with her ex-husband and rush to her older brother for help. While Gjermund is always happy to help Emilie, his wife Silje is tired of him babying his baby sister so much that she never learns to pull herself together. Gjermund tells Emilie that this time, if she wants to stay with them, she’s got to set a goal for herself. What starts off as a joke becomes the ultimate goal for Emilie, completing the Birken. Will Emilie be able to do it and keep her time with Lili? Or will she lose whatever she has left? Let’s find out in The Wrong Track.
Spoiler Alert
Why Does Emilie Decide To Do The Birken?
Emilie learns soon after moving in with Gjermund and Silje that they’re trying to have a baby. Gjermund has been like a father figure to her because he’s much older than her, and he even quit college to look after her because their mom didn’t really care to be there for her. Gjermund always cared for Emilie, but she’d started taking advantage of it. So, when he tells her she has to get out of the house if she doesn’t pick a goal, she thinks he’s joking. So she jokes about trying the Birken, only for him to take it seriously. They start training together, but then one day, because she looks like she doesn’t care enough about this too, Gjermund leaves her in the middle of nowhere to ski her way back home. She manages to do it, and suddenly she’s into skiing. That night, though, there’s a gathering of Gjermund and Silje’s friends, and one of the couples announces they’re pregnant. This leaves Silje devastated, because she’s just learned that they can’t have kids. While Emilie feels for them, she is happy that she doesn’t have to do the Birken any longer.
Then one night, when she’s with her friends, Emilie tells them she’s not doing the Birken anymore. One of her friends says this is typical of her, to quit without even properly putting her heart into anything. I suppose this is what gets Emilie motivated to do it. Emilie eagerly tells Lili that she’s going to do this race and she’s going to complete it. Lili is excited and tells her father that they should go watch. Joachim and his new wife even join Emilie during practice, but they get into a fight when Joachim tells Emilie to use more of her upper body, and she playfully pushes him, leaving him sore. Lili also watches them have their big fight, which makes her very upset. But to add insult to injury, the next day, Joachim tells her that he wants to keep their daughter with him full time, and they can take it to court if she doesn’t agree. However, instead of letting this take the wind out of her sails, Emilie decides she’s come so far, so she’s going to do it. It’s true that when you have something to look forward to, your entire world changes. When Emilie was stranded in the middle of nowhere, she made it back somehow, but she also said no to a drink because she had to practice the next day.
Does The Birken Fix Emilie’s Life?
While Emilie has been working to better herself, her brother fights with his wife because he’s tired of trying to conceive when he’s sure it’s not going to happen. On the day they arrive at Rena, the starting point, Gjermund meets an influencer he’s been following to keep fit. They hit it off, and she invites him to her cabin to help fix her bathtub. At the same time, Emilie meets Ole, a police officer she met many months ago when he caught her peeing under a tree. Ole invites Emilie over, but she says she can’t go because her brother wants her to stay at the school with him and have the full Birken experience. But when she learns he’s not coming back, she decides to go with Ole.
It seems within a few hours of meeting her, Gjermund is so taken by the influencer that he decides he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. It’s actually quite ridiculous because his wife is watching their wedding videos so she can forget about having kids and just be happy with her husband. They spend the night together but just sleep next to each other because it is a race and the influencer wants to win. The next day, before the race, Gjermund tells Emilie his plan, and she’s appalled, but she’s got to focus. He even sends her off to her section (I guess it’s like levels of the race), without as much as a bit of good luck. The race begins for Gjermund, and he’s excited at first until he starts to notice that the influencer isn’t actually a good person and she’s been quite mean to everybody. Later, she tells him to pee in his suit because she can’t wait for him, and this does the trick apparently because the next thing you know, Gjermund is stepping off the track to really rethink his life. At the same time, Silje decides to wait for him at the finish line.
On the other hand, while Emilie is slowly making her way through the Norwegian mountains, her daughter wants to go see her, but Joachim is completely against it. His wife then tells him that he’s been treating Emilie very badly, and she’s scared knowing she’s having his child now. It’s true Joachim is almost the antagonist of this film, and he really likes to beat Emilie down further instead of helping her get back on her feet. This intervention from his wife really wakes him up, though, and he takes Lili to see her mom.
It seems Gjermund finally learned his lesson. If he’d been vocal about his feelings of not wanting to try for a baby anymore, Silje wouldn’t have forced it on him, and he’d never have burst out saying they need time apart. Gjermund went as far as to believe his wife and he didn’t love each other at all. To be fair, being fixated on one thing can make you forget about the others, but this doesn’t mean the love was gone; it was only temporarily missing. Finally, Gjermund doesn’t finish Birken despite it being his goal for years. He even dreamt of going skiing in the winters and climbing in the summers and making that his whole life, but instead, he realizes going back to his wife is the best thing he can do because he still loves her and just needs to stop focusing on the baby thing. Silje also realizes she was wrong about fixating on one thing, and if something really has to come their way, it might, but otherwise she’ll be happy with a dog.
On the other hand, Emilie struggles to make it to two checkpoints. She nearly gets stopped at one point, but Ole saves the day. However, when Emilie has to go through the last stretch, she’s missing her backpack, without which she wouldn’t really be finishing. But she’s the last one trying to finish the race, so some naked locals give her a backpack and fill it with beer bottles to send her off. Emilie finishes the course of over 50 km in 10 hours. By the time she sees her daughter, she’s exhausted, but she’s thrilled. Joachim had once said that she keeps falling and someone has to help pick her up, but this time, it’s with pride he can help her rather than disdain. It’s like the entire country cheered her on to finish, i.e., to find her way onto the right track once again.
In The Wrong Track’s ending, 8 months have passed since the Birken, and Emilie is now a metro driver. It’s Christmas time, and her whole family is waiting for her at her own home, where the toilet is fixed now, but they’re out of toilet paper. The full house and the cheerful laughter really make you realize that Emilie has come a long way. Ole and his mom are there, Gjermund and Silje, and even Joachim, his wife and new baby. It’s everyone who ever cared for Emilie, and she can finally see it clearly with a smile on her face. In the end, Emilie made off the “The Wrong Track.” A truly happy ending.
