An average movie

It seemed to be a really obscure flick but since it was directed by Lasse Hallström and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, following the intro with some really lame cabaret, I was actually quite worried. Fortunately, it turned out to be a decent watch after all. Indeed, after this awful intro, it became some kind of Swedish version of ‘Jules et Jim’. Sure, the whole thing was much lighter than François Truffaut’s classic but I really enjoyed this awesome trio. The fact that Pica Green was really lovely definitely didn’t hurt but Brasse Brännström and Magnus Härenstam were also really charismatic. Eventually, not only these characters were quite entertaining, above all, they were really convincing and relatable. Regarding the directing, I really enjoyed what they did with these characters but not everything worked so well, I’m afraid. For example, the back-and-forth between the past (around ’66), the present (around ’83) and the future (around 2003) was just so awkward and inefficient. The fact that they didn’t make any effort to make  the characters look any younger in the flashback scenes probably didn’t help. Fortunately, they didn’t spend so much time om their past. However, and that was definitely the biggest issue with this movie, instead of developing them as individual or as a group, the characters kept struggling with some writer’s block for some new cabaret show. Seriously, they pretty much wasted half of the running time on this and it seemed that, after managing to create some intriguing characters, they apparently had no clue what to do with them which was just too bad. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it was not bad at all and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in discovering Lasse Hallström’s earlier work.