How Swede it is

Sunday, I actually saw 2 Swedish movies on the same day. What are the odds? Both completely by chance.

The first was at a film club that a friend gave me a free pass to. You never know what film will pop up, though sometimes, if you read the New York and LA film reviews like I do, you can make a good guess. After the movie, there’s a discussion hosted by a local expert (film critic and/or professor). I haven’t stayed for many of those, because rather than discussion of movies, they seem to degenerate into talking to hear myself talk-fests.

I actually did one of those little happy/excited clapping my hands things (oh, yeah!), when I heard them say the name of the movie – Everlasting Moments. I’d seen the reviews and it sounded wonderful. And it truly was. It’s one of those deeply romantic, tragic/triumphant family stories. It takes place in the early 1900s, and follows a woman who marries a charming rascal. As charming rascals tend to do, he cheats, drinks and beats her and the kids. Through it all, she finds comfort in the photographs she takes with a camera she won before they married, and the friendship of the man who owns the photographic studio who encourages her. As a movie about photography should be, it’s achingly gorgeous, and the hopes each character has that are fulfilled, or not, or only partially, pull at your heart. It has all of that old-fashioned longing that you almost never see at the movies any more. And frankly, I left before the discussion started because I thought to myself “damned if I will let you people ruin this wonderful movie for me.”

The second one was one that another friend picked up on DVD. It was Let the Right One In, a vampire flick. Unfortunately, unlike Everlasting Moments, it was dubbed rather than subtitled. Strangely, I find that I can acclimate myself better to reading dialogue than I can to listening to dubbed voices. Especially in this one, where the bad kid’s voice sounded like it was dubbed by the same person that did all the bad guy voices on the Kung Fu Action Theater movies I watched as a kid. Yuck.

And even overlooking the bad voice work, I’m not sure how I feel about this movie. It was definitely a different take on the vampire film than you usually see. It wasn’t the overblown romance or action flick take you mostly see these days. It was more about the practicalities of how do you live if you look like a 12-year old girl and need to live, in the modern world, on blood. Like what do you do with the bodies? And all those details are covered in very realistic fashion. Like dragging a body through the snow (it is Sweden) on a child’s sled. And if you are a vampire, and you want to make friends, who can accept you for the blood drinking killer you are?

Some of the images are absolutely stunning. But for some reason this film never grabbed me. Not that I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re into vampire stuff, it’s an interesting take, and well worth a rental. While it didn’t float my boat, it does take the genre in a new direction, and that’s always good when you’re dealing with a genre that can often be cliché, just because the path is so well worn.