Lacombe, Lucien (Louis Malle, 1974)
At the start of the movie, seventeen-year-old Lucien (Pierre Blaise) kills a bird with a catapult. As it is war time and this is occupied France, I at first assume this is food. (Later, he shoots rabbits and breaks the necks of chickens.) But there’s not a lot of meat on a song bird, even if you are desperate.
Continue reading →En kärlekshistoria (A Swedish Love Story, Roy Andersson, 1970)
So, this is very odd — a film by Roy Andersson that almost has a plot or at least a thread of story.
Continue reading →Kjell Ola Dahl, The Courier (2015, Kureren (translated by Don Bartlett))
I had a moment of panic as I reached the last twenty pages of this book.
There appared to be a ten page leap, when in fact a cluster of pages had come adrift and had been wrongly inserted. After about 300 pages I was definitely worried that I’d miss something vital from the denouement.
Continue reading →Anne Holt, Blind Goddess (Blind Guddine (1993), translated by Tom Geddes)
I’ve temporarily stopped reading Kjell Ola Dahl’s Gunnarstranda and Frølich novels — which I wasn’t writing up — but then I’ve only read about two books this year, both catalogues. Noodling around Bigsouthamericanriver.con I found Anne Holt, who wrote the books (including Frukta inte, on which the Copenhagen-set Modus was based). A ex-lawyer, ex-journalist, ex minister of justice in the Norwegian government, this is her first novel.
Subject to Change 