MovieTime

Review

by Julie Rigg

Roy Andersson is an original, a 65-year-old Swede who has only made four films in forty years. In his last film, Songs From the second Floor, town worthies sacrificed virgins when the world was ending and the economy going bad. You, The Living has a similarly lugubrious, millenarian air; in it people, only marginally connected, try to come to terms with their dreams. In one of these, a man ends up in the electric chair when a dinner party stunt goes wrong. 'Try to relax,' his friends advise, as the death row technician fiddles. 'Think of something else.'

Exquisitely composed in deep focus, and shot in long, slow takes, You, The Living is an absurdist parade, critiquing Swedish solemnity and maybe capitalism itself. The sensibility is a bit like Finland's Kaurismaki, a bit like Norway's Bent Hammer, but mostly, it's just Andersson. He's a film-maker who has critics groping. 'Ingmar Bergman meets surrealism,' says one.

I reckon Ingmar Bergman stoned would be closer.

Director: Roy Andersson
Cast: Jessica Lundberg, Elisabeth Helander, Bjorn Englund, Leif Larsson, Ollie Olson, Brigitta Persson
Producer: Pernilla Sandström
Script: Roy Andersson
Cinematographer: Gustav Danielsson
Editor: Anna Märta Waern
Music: Robert Hefter
Running time: 90
Australian distributor: Potential
Language: Swedish
Classification: M