Fifteen year-old Par grows up in the countryside with his father and mother, routinely helping his father in his Auto repair business. One day while visiting his grandfather, Par notices the Annika, a beautiful fourteen year-old, though he never manages the courage to approach her. Par eventually does find the courage after a few subsequent encounters, with the two falling into love for the first time. Roy Andersson's A Swedish Love Story is a fantastic romantic drama that captures the power and importance of youthful optimism and exuberance. Par and Annika are very idealistic individuals, who from the onset of their relationship truly believe they will be together forever. What is interesting is how Andersson surrounds these characters with parents and older siblings who are deeply cynical, broken down from years of failed relationships and/or business ventures that have left many of them lacking much hope. Andersson juxtaposes much of these character's despair with these two young lovers' joy in a way that beautifully captures the essense of love, showcasing its ability to create optimism and joy in a cyncial world full of discouragement. For lack of a better word, Par and Annika are essentially oblvious characters, untouched by the sadness and discouragement all around them. While nearly every adult character is cynical I don't think A Swedish Love Story is a cynical film at heart. Instead, the film explores a very poignant ideal, in that happiness and despair are mostly dictated by oneself. One of Roy Andersson's earlier films, A Swedish Love Story is stylistically more subdued than his later work but the film still dazzles with beautiful imagery that evokes the emotion of its characters. While Roy Andersson's A Swedish Love Story could easily be described as a beauitful love story, the film's greater attribute lies in the cautionary tale it presents, reminding all of us that the world is what we make it.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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