Tuesday, August 11, 2009

2009 08 11 - En kärlekshistoria/ Swedish Love Story


En kärlekshistoria/ Swedish Love Story
Dir: Roy Andersson
1970 Sweden 115min 35mm Rating to be advised
In Swedish with English subtitles

There are several Roy Anderssons. The internationally renowned auteur of Songs From The Second Floor and You, The Living - blackly hilarious and visually ingenious panoramas of madness and despair. Then, there’s Sweden’s leading director of television commercials, honing his satirical, deadpan style in hundreds of ads for IKEA and others (look for them on Youtube). There’s also the young Andersson, who, in 1970, directed En kärlekshistoria, a phenomenal success in its native Sweden.

Fueled by the youthful energy and freshness of the French New Wave, En kärlekshistoria is ostensibly a simple story about an adolescent boy and girl discovering the risk and excitement of first love, but Andersson locates this firmly within the social context of contemporary Sweden. The ‘love story’, a soaring vision of purity, is set against a darker satire of the Swedish bourgeousie - their petty squabbles and materialistic concerns - pointing in the direction that Andersson would later travel.

It took five years for Andersson to make a second feature, Giliap, and it was castigated by Swedish critics and ignored by audiences. He then turned his back on films and embraced advertising, albeit in his own, uncompromising way. En kärlekshistoria, is a beautiful, often neglected debut, and we believe this is the first time it’s been screened in Singapore.

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