Anita, a middle-aged, upper middle-class woman, has just taken a temporary job at a high school in an affluent suburb of Oslo — mostly out of boredom in her childless marriage to a busy, inattentive lawyer. She is caught completely off-guard when Markus, one of her students, pursues her sexually, and in a moment of vulnerability Anita gives in to him. For Markus, it is a casual one-time conquest to fulfill his curiosity of sex with an older woman. But for Anita, it triggers a romantic obsession and a quest for a furtive relationship with Markus, who is now the one bewildered by her attentions.

A mid-life crisis such as Anita’s has rarely been captured with the degree of emotional incisiveness of Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s new film. There’s a breathtaking suspense to how swiftly these realistically nuanced characters act on both their fears and their impulses, and there’s never a moment where we are not fully invested in Anita and Markus’ respective fates. An Affair explores the degree to which unfulfilled sexual need — and inability to even speak about it — has the capacity to destroy.