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Archive for Sarah Clyne Sundberg

…is a Swedish-American freelance writer based in New York City

The Girl Who Played with Fire

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The Swedish film program at Lincoln Center closed last night with a packed screening of The Girl Who Played with Fire. The movie is the second installment in the trilogy of movies based on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium books.

As it opens, Lisbeth Salander, played by the intense and physically spare Noomi Rapace, is in a luxury villa on the sea, recuperating from her previous ordeals. Then she returns to Stockholm, where she quietly buys herself a large turn-of-the-century apartment with all the trimmings.

(c) Yellow Bird Millennium Rights, Photo Knut Koivisto

(c) Yellow Bird Millennium Rights, Photo Knut Koivisto

This being an action movie Lisbeth doesn’t have much time to rest on her laurels. The Millennium editors are about to publish a story on trafficking victims and their Johns, which leads the perky young couple who have broken the story to an untimely demise. Lisbeth barely has time to reconnect with her old lover (in a scene that had people all around me squeezing their arm rests) before she’s in trouble again.

Lisbeth goes on the lam armed with a taser and a thirst for vengeance. There are car chases, beautifully choreographed boxing fights, even a scene reminiscent of Easy Rider. All performed by a star-studded cast of Swedish actors (Lena Endre! Per Oscarsson! and, uhm, Paolo Roberto!) and set among some really top-notch Stockholm real estate.

There is talk of a Hollywood remake, but really that seems redundant as director Daniel Alfredson has done a great job in a genre that traditionally has been hard to get right: Action in Swedish.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg

May 5, 2010

Children’s Island

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Kay Pollack’s 1980 film Children’s Island, opens with a shot of a typical, drab Stockholm bathroom. The camera pans in and we see there is a person in the tub, floating fetal-like in the water. The body appears sexless. We don’t even know if the person is alive. The camera hangs over it for a while. Then a boy bursts out of the water, panting, shouting that it’s a personal record for holding his breath under water.

The boy is Reine. He is 11, going on 12, and this, in his words, is his, “last summer as a child.” He performs a daily check for signs of puberty, and when he finds none, states, “One more day to live.” Reine’s mother had planned on sending him to summer camp on Barnens Ö (Children’s Island in English). But she is busy and distracted, so is easily outfoxed by Reine who decides to stay alone in the city instead. There he floats around the empty streets, befriending the freaks and outlaws who are still in town. (Everyone else has gone to the countryside.)

Children’s Island is somewhat similar to The Girl, which screened at the beginning of the film series. A portrait of a child left to its own devices, on the brink of adolescence, amidst a sea of self-absorbed adults. Here too the world of adult sexuality seems sinister and creepy. Reine swears to never become a slave to horniness, which is how he envisions adulthood. Over the course of the movie Reine slips further and further into the outskirts of society and along the way, to his horror, experiences his sexual awakening.

(c) 1980 Thomas Wahlberg

(c) 1980 Thomas Wahlberg

Sarah Clyne Sundberg

May 4, 2010

Shorts program highlights

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The sampling of recent shorts featured everything from brief animated sequences like Johannes Nyholm’s Dreams from the Woods, to Stig Björkman’s documentary and almost-to-long-to-be-a-short Images From the Playground.

The latter shows snippets of film shot by Ingmar Bergman (with his home camera). The outtakes and behind the scenes footage from sets and vacations is set to interviews with Bergman and his leading ladies. The film is centered around each of them: Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Bergman says of his trinity of actresses, “We’ve had intense personal relationships, roles and films have been shaped by that.” Such revelations are more or less what one would expect. Others may surprise the audience, such as the tidbit that Bergman, master of severity, liked to ham it up to amuse his cast, among other things by imitating Groucho Marx.

Jonas Odell’s Lies (awarded at Sundance) a semi-animated short in three chapters in which three liars tell stories of big and small lies they’ve told in their lives is fascinating both to look at and listen to.

Good Advice by Andreas Tibblin is another poignant story: A chubby boy, Rasmus feels he falls short of his gym teacher father’s expectations. In the privacy of his room, where astronomy posters decorate the walls, he records a tape for his unborn brother, giving him advice for how to best live with his parents. Advice Rasmus wants to impart as he will not be there to give it in person; he is about to run away. The frantic search that follows and Rasmus’s advice in things big and small, is humorous as well as heart-wrenching.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg

May 1, 2010

The Last Days

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We’re coming up against the last few days of the Swedish film weeks at Lincoln Center. The much anticipated The Girl Who Played with Fire will close the program on Wednesday May 4. I would tell you to see it, but tickets sold out two weeks ago.

Another screening not to be missed is the selection of New Shorts this Friday, April 30 at 5.30 pm. It includes Stig Björkman’s Images from the Playground, a portrait of Ingmar Bergman that includes clips from Bergman’s own home movies. Jonas Odell’s Lies is another highlight.

There are also some truly amazing Swedish classics scheduled: These include A Swedish Love Story, Roy Andersson’s beautiful and tender film of two teenagers in love (and a great portrait of teenage Stockholm in 1969) which will play on Friday, April 30 at 9.15 pm, as well as yet another screening of I Am Curious (Yellow) on Friday at 7.20 pm.

Kay Pollack’s social realist Children’s Island (Friday 3.15 pm and Sunday 5.40 pm) as well as Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (Sunday 8 pm and Tuesday 1 pm) also deserve special mention.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg

April 29, 2010

One Summer of Happiness & Miss Julie

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One particularly clever instance of programming was the combination of Monday’s screenings of One Summer of Happiness and Miss Julie. Both are tales at the intersection of class and sex, and the consequences of radical social change barreling in among the unprepared.

One Summer of Happiness (1951) was a landmark moment in Swedish cinema. In part due to a skinny-dip scene and an implied post-swim roll in the meadow. The film pits the new age of sexual freedom against the strong Lutheran streak in Swedish culture.

One Summer of Happiness © Folkets Hus & Parker Foto Ulf Knöppel

The movie opens with a funeral at a country church. The Minister preaches fire and brimstone against, “The new age, which has swept into our quiet little corner of the world.”

The story is of a young student from the city who leaves to spend a summer with his uncle, in the small farming village his family once came from. Except for his ill-fated motorcycle, there is little in the village to indicate this is the middle of the 20th century. Music comes from accordions, horses pull the ploughs. Yet times they are a-changing. The lure of the big city and new sexual mores are sweeping the land, bringing mostly misery to the women, it seems.

Miss Julie, based on August Strindberg’s 1888 play, plays on similar themes of sex and class. However, this film is set in an age firmly in the grip of the old feudal Sweden. Miss Julie, the aristocratic mistress of a manor house, was raised by her free-thinking mother to act like a man. Now it is midsummer’s eve and she is a confused adult with a newly broken engagement. She is alone in the house with “the people”. This includes Jean, her socially ambitious and gentlemanly servant of lowly origins. An affair between them can only lead to disaster.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg

April 28, 2010