A Hole in My Heart

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: impulse buys / In category: 10 of 10 / Overall: 57 of 100

Why buy?

Part of the Lukas Moodysson box set.

The expectation

An endurance course of a movie.

The actuality

I’ve not seen it, but between ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ and ‘A Hole in My Heart’, Lukas Moodysson co-directed the documentary ‘Terrorists: The Kids They Sentenced’, about police brutality, judicial example-making and the media furore surrounding anti-globalisation protests in Gothenburg in 2001. I’m going to make a point of tracking this film down, because I’m coming to believe – perhaps more so than the work of any other filmmaker I can think of – that Moodysson’s filmography has to be approached sequentially.

‘Fucking Åmål’ dealt with potentially downbeat subject matter (sexual uncertainties, social ostracism, self-harming) but delivered an affirmative ending. ‘Together’ trawled the lives of a collection of misfits and found an essential humanity. The experience of making ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ and ‘Terrorists’, though, seems to have changed the direction of Moodysson’s aesthetic.

‘Lilja 4-Ever’ is dedicated, in its end credits, to all the children of the world exploited by the sex trade. This is an important starting point in any review of ‘A Hole in My Heart’. It is also important, going into the film, to remember that Moodysson has always demonstrated a feminist sensibility: allowing for Elisabeth as main character by proxy from the ensemble cast in ‘Together’, a defining characteristic of Moodysson’s filmography thus far is the female protagonist.

‘A Hole in My Heart’ challenges from the off by having no clearly defined central character, while its redacted cast (it’s essentially a four-hander) doesn’t allow it the status of an ensemble piece. Still, viewed chronologically in Moodysson’s filmography, Tess (Sanna Bråding) is identifiable as the focal point for audience involvement. Tess, to put it bluntly, acts in pornographic movies and it’s for this purpose that she arrives at the pustulantly grubby flat shared by middle-aged wannabe smut director Rikard (Thorsten Flinck) and his permanently depressed goth son Erik (Björn Almroth). Also on the invite list is Rikard’s stud muffin best mate Geko (Goran Marjanovic), Tess’s co-star in said filmic endeavour.

What follows is a 93-minute visual and aural assault on the viewer. The imagery is often extreme. An early scene has Tess describe a surgical procedure for vaginal reconstruction; Moodysson inserts footage of the actual procedure (in queasy, glistening close-up) at several points during the course of the film. Repulsed yet? Stick around (but keep the sick bags handy) because we haven’t got to the vomiting, urination, cockroaches, earthworms, smeared food and sex toys yet.

If anyone’s still with me, (a) thank you for your commitment to this blog; and (b) I will completely understand if you tune out now when I say that ‘A Hole in My Heart’ is an artistically valid film that I would cautiously – very, very cautiously – recommend. But only, as I said earlier, when viewed in its proper place in Moodysson’s body of work.

The last time I took a shot at defining art on this blog (in the context, if I remember correctly, of the Powell & Pressburger film ‘A Matter of Life and Death’) I said something like “art is when a work functions equally on an intellectual, emotional and aesthetic level”. If nothing else, this kind of platitude should serve as a warning that anyone who attempts to define art is on a hiding to nowhere.

Art ennobles. Art celebrates. But art can also howl in despair. Art is a label we can put on some of the most beautiful things ever created. But art can also be the blood and the guts and the gore and the filth. Art also serves to provoke, to challenge, to discomfort, to upset, to cause controversy, to force debate as to its own definition, its own validity and its own purpose. Because if art does not do these things, then it will only ever mirror the positive aspects of humanity and therefore be a lie.

Art can encompass works that are anti-art. Art can aspire to an anti-aesthetic. Consider minimalist and atonal music – the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera. But still as important. Or the stripped-down credo of the Dogme 95 filmmakers – a world apart from the big-screen excesses of David Lean. But still important.

Another thing needs to be factored into any discussion of art (and this is why I can’t emphasize enough the importance of approaching ‘A Hole in My Heart’ having watched Moodysson’s preceding films in order): so much depends on context. I know that sounds like a lot of wishy-washy, liberal, Guardian-reading crap, but context is what separates the degradation the characters suffer in, say, Ruggero Deodato’s ‘House on the Edge of the Park’ from the degradation the characters suffer in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom’ and renders one of them an (albeit exceptionally well-made) exploitation movie and the other an important work of film art. Deodato delivers violence and sexual violence and does so for its own sake, as well as for the sake of generating ticket sales. Pasolini delivers violence and sexual violence (as well as scenes of abject humiliation and caprophilia) – and believe me, I approached ‘Salo’ a few years ago and ended up watching it in 15 minute segments over a week; that was the only way I could get through it without being physically sick or lapsing into profound depression; the imagery of ‘Salo’ is much much worse than anything on the DPP’s video nasties list – but does so to deliver a hammerblow against fascism, the marriage of de Sade’s original text with the WWII setting of Pasolini’s film providing a bitterly ironic commentary on the political climate of Italy at the time Pasolini made the film. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that both films are hard to watch, both rub the audience’s face in it and both challenge the propriety of what a “responsible” filmmaker should or shouldn’t depict, yet one is art because of its context and the other isn’t.

I’m 1,000 words into this piece and I’m in great danger of writing myself into a corner. Either that or deviating so far from the business at hand – a write-up of ‘A Hole in My Heart’ – that the point will irretrievably be lost.

I feel I should talk about such mainstays of the conventional film review as acting, direction, cinematography, narrative, characterisation and mise-en-scene. But ‘A Hole in My Heart’ raises a huge and dirty middle finger to such concerns – and does so for a reason. ‘A Hole in My Heart’ (the title itself should tip you off that you’re not supposed to like it) is an anti-film. Its subject is the lowest exposition of filmmaking as an artform: the porno. (And yet, perversely, the porno is perhaps the most honest and unpretentious example of the medium: it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a litany of sexual activity filmed, edited and distributed for the sole purpose of aiding masturbation.) It is filmed using the kind of basic equipment, shoddy location, bad lighting and limited technique that characterizes your average skin flick. Its characters are the kind of people you would imagine being involved in such an undertaking: Tess, the exploited commodity, convincing herself that Rikard will recommend her to a producer in the mainstream film industry; Rikard, the misogynist whose issues with his dead wife and inability to communicate with or provide direction for his son are the root cause of a project undertaken as both a petty power trip and an exegesis of his self-loathing; and Geko, the narcissist whose muscular physicality belies the fact that he’s terminally ill.

‘Lilja 4-Ever’ was Moodysson’s scream of protest against a system of underworld activity that targets vulnerable children and viciously exploits them (his script was based on an actual case). ‘A Hole in My Heart’ is his scream of protest against a society that lets this happen – that lets any and all bad things happen – because it’s too busy burying its nose in shallow concerns, wanking off over porn, fixating on ‘Big Brother’, stuffing itself with food, numbing itself with alcohol, alienating its children, shitting in its own backyard, making a puke-ridden and piss-stained embarrassment of itself. Moodysson’s film is a slap in the face, a knee to the groin. If it makes you feel soiled and disgusted and angry, that’s because it’s meant to. If it comes off as challenging and difficult and unpleasant, that’s because Moodysson made a conscious aesthetic decision to that effect.

You are not supposed to like this film.

In this respect, it succeeds too well. With an IMDb rating of 4.5 and a backlash of critical disapproval that was already frenzied before the film had even been premiered, ‘A Hole in My Heart’ did no favours for Moodysson’s reputation. And I must admit, in all honesty, had I chosen it as my inaugural Moodysson film from the box set – had I not formed an understanding of his artistic trajectory over four feature films – I would be writing a very different review right now. A hostile and vehement one.

Good buy/bad buy?

The box set as a whole: thunderingly good buy. ‘Fucking Åmål’ and ‘Together’ are films I can see myself returning to again and again until they become old friends. ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ I will return to only very occasionally and my heart will break for Lilja each time. Right now I can’t honestly say that I’m in any hurry for a second viewing of ‘A Hole in My Heart’. Maybe once in more, in four or five years’ time, and then only for the luminescent Sanna Bråding’s provision of the vaguest semblance of humanity the film has to offer.

BUT. I spent a tenner (about $15.50) on a four film box set that introduced me to a director I knew nothing of a few weeks ago and whom I now regard as one of the most important European talents currently at work. I will definitely be tracking down ‘Terrorists’ as well as his most recent films ‘Container’ and ‘Mammoth’.

Lilja 4-Ever

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: impulse buys / In category: 9 of 10 / Overall: 56 of 100

Why buy?

Part of the Lukas Moodysson box set.

The expectation

A downbeat, emotionally draining drama.

The actuality

Did I say “downbeat”? In the first half hour or so of ‘Lilja 4-Ever’, the eponymous 16 year old heroine (Oksana Akinshina) has her hopes of a new life in America dashed when her mother accompanies her new suitor abroad, leaving Lilja behind in Russia with the vague promise of joining them later. Lilja’s bad-tempered Aunt Anna (Liliya Shinkaryova) cons her out of her mother’s apartment, coercing her into a move to a dingy towerblock flat with peeling wallpaper, threadbare carpets and defective plumbing. It’s enough to make your average Ken Loach film look like a feelgood rom-com. And things only get worse for our girl.

Did I say “emotionally draining”? Lilja is left without money, the electricity cut off, and summoned before social services who are in receipt of a letter from her mother renouncing her care of Lilja and turning her over to the state. Determining to become self-sufficient, Lilja reluctantly lets her so-called best friend Natasha (Elina Benenson) persuade her into turning tricks for older men they meet at a nightclub. When Natasha’s parents find her stash of earnings from these liaisons, she claims the money is Lilja’s, denounces her as a slut and gives her a reputation in the neighbourhood which culminates in a gang rape at the hands of a gang of local youths.

Depressed yet? Hang onto your Prozac, because we’re less than an hour in and the worst is still to come.

BUT. Whereas a Ken Loach or a Lars von Trier would have gone all out with the miserablism and human suffering, Moodysson never loses sight of Lilja’s effervescence, her sparky and rebellious attitude, never mind the travails she goes through. He charts her friendship with fellow outcast Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky), a young boy whose father is a truculent bully, sensitively but enthusiastically. The few moments of lightheartedness they share together are joyous and touching. Oksana Akinshina delivers an utterly open, heart-on-her-sleeve performance as Lilja.

So far, Lilja’s mother, aunt and best friend have formed the triumvirate responsible for Lilja’s woes. Compared to Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who wanders onto the scene about half way through the film, they’re her fucking benefactors.

Andrei is the too-good-to-be-true boyfriend: good job in Sweden, own flat, flowery promises of a better future. Volodya sees through him immediately. His concerns fall on deaf ears. Lilja sees in Andrei a way out. A new start. Andrei acquires a passport for her in a false name. At the last minute, driving her to the airport, he manufactures a story that he’s been detained and he’ll follow her later (an ironic reversal of her mother’s lie earlier). When her flight lands, she finds herself not in the promised land but the clutches of ill-tempered pimp Witek (Tomasz Neuman). He imprisons her in a dingy flat in a towerblock in a shabby and graffiti-ridden district, all of which are virtually indistinguishable from her home in Russia.

And thus Moodysson wrenches the audience through the last half hour – 30 minutes of cinema as despairing, emotionally devastating and unflinchingly directed as, say, the final stretches of ‘Requiem for a Dream’.

BUT. Even the bleakest moments – a montage of men who use and abuse Lilja (variously: old, ugly, seedy, perverted, misogynistic); a failed escape attempt that results in a beating; Lilja running helplessly and without through the anonymous streets of a foreign and unfriendly city while Rammstein’s bludgeoningly unsubtle ‘Mein Herz Brendt’ (“my heart burns”) roars abrasively on the soundtrack – are offset by a remarkable, and hitherto unheralded in Moodysson’s filmography, leap into the metaphysical.

I’ve littered this review with minor to moderate spoilers already, so I’m saying nothing more about this element of ‘Lilja 4-Ever’. I’ll just post this still …

… and note that the bird is a metaphor and leave it there.

‘Lilja 4-Ever’ is a hard film to watch. In a cinematic climate where audience desensitivity is arguably at its height thanks to half a decade of torture porn, ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ proves that the art form still has the power to disturb, to upset, to provoke. Not that it achieves this by hammering the audience with extreme imagery or testing their limits the way anything from ‘Hostel’ (at the mainstream end) to, say, ‘A Serbian Film’ (at the extreme end), but by engaging the audience with the life, the hopes and the occasional joys of a flawed but extremely human protagonist and then giving the audience nowhere to hide, no narrative or aesthetic comfort zone, when said protagonist, through no fault of her own, is forced into a life that no-one should have to endure.

‘Lilja 4-Ever’, in its own gut-wrenching way, is an incredibly passionate film. Oksana Akinshina is an incredibly fearless actress. Lukas Moodysson proves himself, three films in a row, as one hell of a director.

Together

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: impulse buys / In category: 8 of 10 / Overall: 55 of 100

Why buy?

Part of the Lukas Moodysson box set.

The expectation

An acutely observed, po-faced bit of satire.

The actuality

I had a productive and engaging day at work today. I mention this for a reason.

Usually, my working day is eight hours of ennui which I make it through purely by dwelling on whatever movie I watched last and composing a review in my head, structuring it, shaping it, figuring out a good opening sentence or paragraph, a hook that leads into the rest of the article; then fleshing it out, developing it, challenging myself to come up with trenchant observations or pithy remarks. Eight hours of marking time and wanting to be anywhere other than at my desk, at the end of which I amble home, fix something to eat, spend some quality time with Mrs Agitation, then flip on the computer and transcribe the review from my head into Word.

Today, I didn’t have that luxury. Today, I actually enjoyed my job, took satisfaction in my endeavours and saw a positive result. As a result of which, I’m staring at a screen that is blank except for 190 non-film-related words and cursing my employers for putting me in a position whereby I haven’t had the opportunity to marshal my thoughts on ‘Together’.

So, fumbling my way into this write-up, I guess there’s two immediate, superficial approaches. One is to say: ‘Together’ is about a maltreated housewife, Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren), who walks out on her temperamental husband Rolf (Michael Nyqvist) and seeks shelter at Tilsammens (Swedish for “together”), the hippie commune run by her milquetoast brother Göran (Gustaf Hammarsten). Suburbanite Elisabeth and her young children experience a culture clash with their socialist, vegan, pro-feminist, politically active hosts, while the remorseful Rolf tries to mend his ways and rebuild bridges with his family. Hilarity ensues.

The other is to say: Göran is trying maintain an open relationship with the dipsomaniac and emotionally infantile Lena (Anja Lundkvist) while keeping the peace in a settlement full of well-meaning but politically very different drop-outs, from politically aware but terminally naïve Erik (Olle Sarri) – whom Lena moons after – to the openly gay and painfully angst-ridden Klas (Shanti Roney) by way of recently estranged couple Lasse (Ola Rapace) and Anna (Jessica Liedberg). Lasse baits Erik while fending off (or maybe not) Klas’s advances, while bridling at the fact that Anna has embraced lesbianism for what he sees as political rather than sexual, romantic or emotional reasons. Into this melting pot of counter-culture comes suburban housewife Elisabeth. The results are funny, poignant and life-changing.

Both of these descriptions, never mind that they tick the required boxes, are essentially wrong. The first makes ‘Together’ sound like a smug but ultimately schmaltzy culture-clash comedy. The second comes on like a Robert Altman ensemble piece shot through with a bleatingly liberal indie sensibility. The first sounds plotless, the second overplotted. Neither come anywhere close to capturing the charm, wit, intelligence, attention to detail and investment in character and character development that imbues virtually every frame of ‘Together’.

In lesser hands, the characters could have been ciphers. Clichés. Stereotypes. Moodysson, even when painting in the boldest strokes, draws impeccably nuanced performances from his cast, not one performer putting a foot wrong. His script is just as subtle. A Hollywood comedy utilising this scenario would pound the audience into brain-damage with facile life lessons and blatantly manipulative moralising. Moodysson, on the other hand, simply lets his characters interact and observes how they rub off on each other. He never makes fun of their foibles (in fact, their interaction is niftily juxtaposed with the emotional sterility of the disapproving curtain-twitchers who live opposite the commune), but simply presents them as human beings. Flawed, sometimes foolish, but never less than human.

Nor does he ever lose sight of the potential of wry humour as a comment on the human condition. Consider the scene where one of the aforesaid curtain-twitchers spies through binoculars on Anna and Elisabeth swaying drunkenly in what he perceives as a seductive dance; brushing off his wife’s overtures to join him on the sofa, he claims that he’s going to the basement to do some woodwork; downstairs, he takes a wank mag from underneath his bench, seizes a hammer and bashes away at a non-existent project as he fumbles at his belt. Moodysson cuts to his wife, knitting metronomically, her eyes rolling as the hammering becomes more and more frenzied. Aesthetically, this is Robin Askwith territory; yet Moodysson’s deadpan approach to the material renders it comedy gold.

From this throwaway scene, Moodysson develops a beautifully understated subplot regarding the tentative romance that develops between Elisabeth’s socially inept daughter and the curtain-twitchers’ overweight and nerdy son. As he did in ‘Fucking Åmål’, Moodysson is sensitive, responsible and empathetic in his depiction of children sidelined by their peers and rejected as uncool. He refuses to condescend or poke fun.

The non-judgementalism extends to the adults in the cast. Many a director would pitch Rolf as the villain of the piece, particularly when he comes into the sphere of influence of one Birger Andersson (Sten Ljunggren), the fuck-up anti-hero of ‘Talk’. At this point, having seen ‘Talk’, I went all queasy, imagining that Moodysson had set the narrative on course towards a savage and unpalatable ending.

Again, my bad on making snap judgements. Against all the odds – ie. the memories of anyone who’s ever seen ‘Talk’ and winced at the gallows-humour ending – Moodysson redeems Birger as a man who just wants to do the right thing. His intensity and insistence initially comes across as creepy, but there’s a moment late in the film where, to his own discomfort and knowing that he’ll be overlooked and left alone, he deliberately and gallantly removes himself from the equation the better to allow Rolf, a man he barely knows, a shot at reconciliation. Like so much of ‘Together’, it’s an unforced, candidly observed moment which proves that Moodysson’s characters are capable of demonstrating their best even if the vagaries of life have compromised and wrongfooted them.

‘Together’ is sublime. It is the loveliest and most unexpected cinematic discovery I’ve made this year.

Show Me Love (a.k.a. Fucking Åmål)

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: impulse buys / In category: 7 of 10 / Overall: 54 of 100

Why buy?

Part of the Lukas Moodysson box set.

The expectation

A low-key relationships drama. Potentially downbeat. Ingmar Bergman with a four pack of cheap lager, a spliff and some dance music on the iPod.

The actuality

Neil Fulwood, write out 500 times “I will not come to such bitchy snap judgements on a film I have not watched yet.” And when you’ve finished that, write out 500 hundred times “Lukas Moodysson’s ‘Show Me Love’ is a joyous and life-affirming gem of a movie.”

Or how about I spend 500 words or so explaining why and get let off detention? Okay? Cool.

But before I start composing this essay – let’s give it the working title of ‘How I Learned to Overcome My Doubts and Love This Movie’ by Mr Agitation aged 38 and a quarter – let’s consider the title. It was titled ‘Show Me Love’ for its UK and US distribution (after the song by Robyn that plays during the closing credits). It’s indigenous title is ‘Fucking Åmål’. Already we’re up against a contradiction of sorts – it’s not the only one, and in its own small way it’s part of the pleasure of the movie.

Now, there are several reasons for a studio or a distributor to retitle a movie. (You know the Macaulay Culkin/Anna Chlumsky named-after-a-song barf-fest ‘My Girl’? The original title was ‘Born Jaundiced’. Need I say more?) In this case I can think of two reasons. One: ‘Fucking Åmål’ has two diacritic rings in the title, a linguistic WTF to English speaking ticket buyers. Two: it has “fucking” in the title. I list these reasons not necessarily in order.

So: why is it called ‘Fucking Åmål’? Well, Åmål is the small Swedish town in which the film is set. The grown-ups seem to like the place (it’s a quiet, rustic and uneventful place, the kind of town where you can leave your door unlocked and not come home to your electrical goods stolen and a turd where the Persian rug used to be). The kids think it sucks. They dream of the bright lights in Stockholm. (I’ve been to Stockholm, btw, and – brother! – it ain’t no party town.) It’s the kids who have coined the title. Fucking Åmål – and they say it with such vehemence because they equate their geographical basis with who they are (three titles into Moodysson’s filmography and I’m feeling confident that this is one of his central concerns as a director); they blame Åmål for the drabness of their lives.

Principle among these kids are 14-going-on-30 drop-dead gorgeous blonde Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) – all fashionably bored insouciance and a pout to die for – and her older sister Jessica (Erica Carlson). Elin and Jessica are the mainstays of the too-cool-for-school crowd. On the other side of the high school tracks, we have the mousy Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg). The unpopular and socially awkward scion of well-meaning but cringingly embarrassing parents, Agnes has moved around a lot as a result of her father’s work and has never fitted in anywhere. Her self-doubt isn’t helped by the burgeoning emotional feelings she is beginning to develop towards other girls. Specifically Elin.

Agnes’s 16th birthday party finds her at her lowest ebb. When Elin and Jessica crash her non-existent party, Elin standing to win 20 krona from her sister if she kisses Agnes for a dare, the resulting humiliation leaves Agnes so despondent she begins self-harming.

Still with me?

I can imagine that anyone who hasn’t seen the film and has got this far with my review is probably convinced that ‘Show Me Love’/‘Fucking Åmål’ is an archetypal slab of Scandinavian miserablism. Unrequited love, small town parochialism, guilt, shame, self-harm. Bar tender – a pint of hemlock and a packet of razor blades, if you please!

BUT!

Something clicks in Elin’s mind/subconscious/heart. She goes back to apologise to Agnes. She experiences the same emotional pull towards another girl. Suddenly it’s Elin who’s as confused, conflicted and vulnerable as Agnes. With the, ahem, “example” of Jessica’s relationship with the oikish and unlikeable Markus (Stefan Hörberg) being held up as an utterly inappropriate indicator of, ahem, “normality”, Elin sublimates her feelings for Agnes by accepting the advances of nice-but-dim 17-year-old Johan (Mathias Rust).

At this point, about two-thirds of the way through a scant 89-minute running time, ‘Show Me Love’/‘Fucking Åmål’ had achieved such an emotional complexity and honesty I was astounded that Moodysson (almost 30 at the time of filming, and a heterosexual male) had managed to empathise so completely with two characters, half his age, struggling with the acceptance of their sexuality. That he managed to draw such poignant and naturalistic performances from his young cast is equally impressive.

The last third of the movie just took my response to a new level. I’d been impressed. I’d appreciated it on a number of levels. Come the end, I just plain loved it.

Now, I said there were contradictions. The first is the original title. ‘Fucking Åmål’ is an abrasive, almost confrontational title. It comes on like a Larry Clarke film. It wants to provoke you, rub your nose in it, promise you bad behaviour and make it all the worse for its perpetrators being underage. And yet it plays out as a beautifully nuanced, heartfelt romance. (No spoilers, but there’s a scene in the back of a car which wins the Agitation of the Mind Best Kiss Award in All of Cinema, and you can keep ‘From Here to Eternity’! It’s a brief and commendably non-exploitative scene that goes from tentative to passionate to agonisingly unconsummated within maybe a minute.)

There is also an aesthetic contradiction. Moodysson employs an understated visual and directorial style at all times. He never strives for iconography or the obviously cinematic. His immersion of the audience into the lives of his characters is absolute and he does nothing to remind you that you’re watching a film. Right up till the ending which, conceptually, is as wish-fulfilment/crowd-pleasing/borderline manipulative as, say, the finale of ‘Dirty Dancing’ or ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’.

And yet, whereas those films reinforce their artificiality by dint of the lachrymose excesses of their denouements, Moodysson somehow – and I’m damned if I know how – manages to keep his aesthetic and his emotional honesty intact. Somehow he synthesises the realism of his portrait of disaffected youth with the feelgood factor of an unabashedly old fashioned happy ending, sending his audience out on an absolute high while never jeopardising the integrity of his characters, his story or his film. A film which, it has to be said, is a small marvel of a debut.

Lukas Moodysson week

I’ll be rounding out the “impulse buys” category of Operation 101010 this week with four Lukas Moodysson films. He’s a director I know nothing about apart from the almost unanimous acclaim garnered by his first three films – ‘Show Me Love’ (a.k.a. ‘Fucking Åmål’), ‘Together’ and ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ – and the scabrous controversy which his fourth – ‘A Hole in My Heart’ – engendered.

These four titles are collected in the Metrodome four-DVD box set which I picked up for a song (£10 – i.e. £2.50 a movie) a few months ago but which has sat on the shelf gathering dust. I had it at the back of my mind that ‘Show Me Love’ and ‘Together’ would be desperately worthy, ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ utterly depressing and ‘A Hole in My Heart’ an endurance course of a movie.

I squared up to the box set over the weekend. I’ve watched ‘Show Me Love’ and ‘Together’ (thoughts on those tomorrow and Wednesday) and I’ll be sticking ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ on as soon as I’ve posted this.

But I thought I’d kick start Moodysson week (it’s not a retrospective per se since I don’t have copies of ‘Container’ and ‘Mammoth’ available) with a few words on ‘Talk’, an early short film included as one of the extras.

‘Talk’ – the indigenous title ‘Bara Prata Lite’ translates as something closer to ‘Just Talk for a While’ – starts with Birger Andersson (Sten Ljunggren), a shambolic looking man in late middle age, trying to strike up a conversation with a younger woman on a bus. He tells her that he’s on his way to work and that he works at the Volvo plant. Her disinterest is palpable. She ignores him. At the Volvo plant, Birger wanders round – seemingly aimlessly. Anorak on, plastic bag clutched in his hand, he cuts a sorry figure. He passes on some advice to an engineer working on a precision part – the man tells him to clear off. He wanders into an empty canteen looking for a cup of tea – the cashier eyes him warily and calls for the chef. The chef tries to reason with him: he doesn’t work there anymore; go home; take up a hobby. Birger seems about to go off on one, but leaves.

So far, so good. A decent character study underpinned by an unshowy but affecting performance from Ljunggren. Similarly unfussy direction from Moodysson. A highly observational piece documenting one of life’s overlooked denizens. Not necessarily a loser; more a victim of his own mundanity.

If Moodysson had left it there, or continued second half of his 14-minute short in like manner, I’d have no hesitation in hailing ‘Talk’ as a little gem. Unfortunately, Moodysson decides to give the piece a meaning rather than let Birger’s sad and forgotten life speak for itself.

Mahapadu (Cecilia Frode), a hippie in thrall to eastern religions, turns up on Birger’s doorstep – a flower child version of a Jehovah’s witness – and much to her stupefaction is invited in. Birger, natch, just wants to talk. So does she. But Birger wants to talk about his life, about the small failings and day-to-day drabness that defines it. Mahapadu wants to talk about God and enlightenment. Birger, dismissing her beliefs, drones on and on, his logorrhea building to a rant. Mahapadu, unnerved, tries to leave …

It’s obvious where this is going, and the theme of talking as not necessarily analogous to communication isn’t so much introduced into, or debated by, the film as hammered home with a fucking big mallet. A gallows-humour coda ends things on a slightly weird note, the very grounded and character-based scenes of just ten minutes earlier having somehow morphed into a bad comedy sketch.

Still, ‘Talk’ shows great skill from its fledgling director, not least in his ability with actors. Ljunggren’s characterisation of Birger is finely nuanced and utterly convincing, so much so that even the out-of-place ending doesn’t detract from the completeness of the performance. Also, the success of ‘Talk’ gave Moodysson the opportunity to make ‘Show Me Love’. It served its purpose.