World Cinema Film Reviews - Scandinavia

After The Wedding (Susanne Bier - Denmark - 2006)

For someone who had only previously seen Mads Mikkelsson as the villain in the 2007 Bond film 'Casino Royale' his performance here was a nice surprise for me. He's a fine actor and although this film can tend towards the melodramatic on occasion it's done so well that any reservations are soon laid to rest amidst the engrossing glimpse into the psychodrama of the characters and the predicaments they each find themselves facing. Mikkelson is Jacob - a reformed drinker, womaniser and all round bad egg who has left his wayward lifestyle behind him and is now an aid worker in Africa seeking funds to build a school. Enter Jorgen - a wealthy industrialist, and Jacob's new husband who has money to donate to Jacob's cause - with some strings attached. Bier directs the proceedings with poise and confidence and though things become a bit predictable towards the end it's fascinating to accompany these characters on their life's journey.

The Bothersome Man (Jens Lien - Norway - 2006)

Very weird and really well done film from the obviously talented Jens Lien, about Andreas - a man who arrives in a strange city one day with little idea of his purpose, or even how he came to be there in the first place. He's welcomed into the city with open arms and everyone seems friendly, if somewhat distant. He settles into a life of pleasant enough mundanity but struggles to make connections with those around him and begins to suspect something's awry. From slightly mysterious but seemingly innocuous beginnings the film gets progressively darker and more sinister as events unfold, until we're sharing in some powerfully disturbing scenes with Andreas desperately trying to figure out what's going on and how to escape. There's a serene surreality about this film that's somehow typically Scandinavian in its stoic and bland oddness. Trond Fausa Aurvaag gives a brilliantly focussed performance as the tormented main character and the whole production exudes the highest quality, from the fantastic cinematography to the brooding score. Certainly the best film to come out of Norway I've seen so far.

Brodre (Susanne Bier - Denmark - 2004)

Bier is a master of melodrama. She recruits excellent actors, lets them do their thing and goes about the business of telling her story with a sure hand and a deft touch. This tells of a somewhat unconventional love triangle between Sarah and Michael - a husband and wife - and the husband's brother. When Michael is sent to the war in Afghanistan Sarah has to learn to adjust to life bringing up their two children on her own. Michael's unreliable brother Jannik decides to help out and the two form a close bond. Much of this film is split between the Scandinavian bleakness of Denmark and the insufferable heat of the Afghan desert and the quite different but similarly volatile situations in which the two brothers find themselves. The contrast of the two storylines is stark indeed, and handled very well by Bier, and the performances are excellent. Ulrich Thomsen in particular is outstanding.

The Five Obstructions (Lars Von Trier/Jorgen Leth - Denmark - 1996)

Lars Von Trier is one of these directors who can stun you with a masterpiece one year then boggle your mind with some severely mis-judged mess the next. He's an innovator who likes to step outside the conventional way of doing things and this can yield great results, but can sometimes be so misconceived that no-one could pull it off. On hearing about this project I wouldn't have been surprised if this turned out to be one of his failed experiments but in actual fact it's much closer to a masterpiece than a mess. Here he teams up with Jorgen Leth who directed 'The Perfect Human' - a famous short from 1967, much revered by Von Trier. The two dissect the film and Von Trier sets about tormenting Leth by setting him the task of remaking this film five times, each time differently, and with extreme restrictions imposed on him. This film offers an intriguing portrait of the two men, their very different personalities, and approaches to filmmaking. Absolutely fascinating and frequently hilarious.

Let The Right One In (Thomas Alfredson - Sweden - 2008)

Another vampire film but this one is very different from your average run of the mill vampire tale, full of coiffeured hair-dos and sexy blood-sucking scenes with romantic or erotic overtones. No, this is much more what you'd imagine the real experience of being a vampire would be - pretty miserable on the whole. We observe the humdrum lives of a few folk on a housing estate in a run-down part of Sweden where a lonely young boy who's being bullied at school encounters a strange young girl outside his house one day. The two strike up a weird relationship and the boy slowly catches on to the fact that she is in fact a vampire. Far from being some omnipotent winged fantasy figure though the girl is lonely, scared and does not hunt humans if she can avoid it. In fact her guardian - an old man (possibly her father) murders young men to harvest their blood so she doesn't have to kill. For the most part this film is shot in such an unassuming, matter of fact way that it adds to the fascination of the unlikely scenario by seeming so un-fantastic and therefore more believable, and is thus far more engaging than the likes of 'Twilight' which was released around the same time and is more akin to something like Lost Boys which was pure teen fantasy. Let The Right One In reads like a cross between 'Interview With The Vampire', '4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days' (see above) and the Japanese horror film Juon, and strikes just the right balance between them. This is the best horror film I've seen since 'The Orphanage'.

Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer - Denmark - 1955)

Dreyer's film portrays the lives and different attitudes towards the prevailing religious beliefs of a family of farmers in West Jutland. The father of the family, Morten is in conflict with the local tailor Peter due to the differences in their religious beliefs. Morten sees his faith as celebrating life, whereas the austere Peter focusses on death and abstinence. Morten's youngest son Anders is in love with Peter's daughter and the two parents cannot come to an agreement to let the two marry. Morten's other two sons are more bothersome for Morten as Mikkel is an atheist and Johannes believes he's Jesus. Talk about a dysfunctional family! The real test of faith arises when Inger - Mikkel's heavily pregnant wife goes into labour and her life hangs in the balance. Dreyer masterfully introduces each character and sets out their stall very subtly and unobtrusively. The actors are very naturalistic and the pacing is perfect. The beautiful black and white photography is a joy to behold and the narrative is compelling and believable right up to the final scene. All in all this is a masterpiece.

Pusher (Nicolas Winding Refn - Denmark - 1996)

Gritty Danish film about a small time drug dealer who gets involved with the wrong type and pays dearly for it. The week starts off for our hero Frank with a drug deal that goes spectacularly wrong and for the rest of the week he's playing a desperate game of cat and mouse with the cops and a deadly game of catch up with the dealers higher up the food chain who are after the money he stole from them. I would say that this film seems pretty realistic as far as cinematic representations of the world of small time drug dealers goes, for what it's worth. First time director Nicolas Winding Refn extracts a fair amount of tension from the situation in which Frank finds himself and that tension is maintained for most of the film. A good first effort.

Songs From The Second Floor (Roy Andersson - Sweden - 2000)

Andersson is great at portraying Sweden as this down at heel, bleak place that seems to be disconnected with the rest of the world. He then fills this strange grey world with oddball characters just trying to get on with their lives. This is leisurely paced but rich in detail so you're never frustrated by the lack of incident, and although everything seems to be very slow and doom-laden all is not what it appears. Andersson's films are frequently hilarious, and if at first they seem to be influenced by fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, they're actually more heavily influenced by Monty Python. It's the juxtaposing of the serious Swedes and their stereotypically stoic manner with the absurdity of the situations Andersson pushes them into that is the key to his success. 'Songs From The Second Floor' is the best example of Andersson's style, and it features some remarkable vignettes such as the commuters on the train all spontaneously breaking into a dour singalong, or the sombre group of officials gathered for a very serious ceremony which turns out to be pushing a young girl off a cliff to her death, for reasons left completely unexplained. But all this is not to suggest that this film is just an absurdist comedy, because the whole production is permeated with real pathos too. Andersson strikes an exquisite balance throughout, and that's quite a trick to pull off. Roy Andersson is one of a kind.

You, The Living (Roy Andersson - Sweden - 2004)

Who knew the Swedes could be so funny? Most people's experience of Swedish filmmaking is either the emotional turmoil and psychological angst of Ingmar Bergman or bad seventies porn. With 'You, The Living' Andersson provides us with a whole new view of life in modern Sweden and on some of the oddball people who are living it. For the first ten minutes or so I was a bit unsure of the tone Andersson was going for in this film, but it soon became clear after one of the characters relates a dream he had about a dinner party that this is at heart a funny film. In fact it's frequently hilarious. The film's basically a series of loosely connected vignettes - some of which are insightful reflections on life, love, and finding your place in the world, and some are wry, amusing or absurd. The whole thing somehow hangs together perfectly though and in addition to providing some chuckles is visually interesting and it's fascinating to watch events unfold in their slow methodical way.