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.

I wrote of Du Levande (You, The Living (2007)) that it was “sort of Bergman with a (audience provided) laugh track. Ingmar Bergman and the Holy Grail, or Bergman’s tv sketch show, as it’s a series of vignettes.” This film is Bergman handed the script to a John Hughes movie, but adding S.E. Hinton wannabees.

Pär (Rolf Sohlman) is Romeo to Annika’s (Ann-Sofie Kylin) Juliet. He’s from the wrong side of the tracks, which he crosses on his scooter in homage to Marlon Brando. Everyone is pretty miserable, whether they are middle class or working class, and about the best hope is to become an air stewardess, but you probably need to learn a foreign language.

It all gets weird when the families come together for a crayfish supper — John Hellberg (Bertil Norström), an alcoholic refrigerator salesman, has a breakdown and a sinister turn is signalled. He is pissed in the British and American senses. Suddenly, the families wandering through the foggy dawn of the Swedish countryside anticipate the soldiers wandering through a snow blind landscape in a later, surrealler, Andersson feature. The lovers are sweet and utterly believable, and will no doubt live angstily ever after.