By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 17, 2021)

Swedish director Jens Jonsson’s WW2 drama is based on a “rumored” story regarding famous Norwegian-Swedish actress Sonja Wigert. After Sonja (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) shuns the advances of German occupied Norway’s reichskommissar Josef Terboven (Alexander Scheer), he arranges to have her father arrested by the SS (as spurned Nazis do). Swedish intelligence offers to help free her father if Sonja agrees to get chummy with Terboven so she can gather intel (they are eager to find out if/when the Germans plan on invading Sweden).

The film drags in the first half, which is essentially a series of fetes and elegant dinners where Sonja flirts and mingles with high-ranking Nazis, but eventually delivers on its “spy thriller” billing with added layers of subterfuge and intrigue. While not destined to be mentioned in the same breath as Mephisto or The Last Metro, The Spy is a stylish (if workmanlike) genre entry. The screenplay was written by Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and Jan Trygve Røyneland.