Day seventy-four: A Swedish Love Story (May, 22)

I found out about this movie in some of the imdb.com's lists, where it was referred as a love story - hence the movie's name, A Swedish Love Story (En Kärlekshistoria), a Swedish production from the 1970's. Some of the comments on the same site sustain how beautiful this love story is and blah blah. 

Sorry, folks, but this is not a love story. Well, I must add, it wasn't one for me. 

Two teenagers fall in love in a quiet, beige, beautiful Swedish scenery. Silent dialogues, nothing too hysteric until the end, we accompany the two falling in love, their friends and family as a background. Or, better, their love story is the background for an incredible picture of the Swedish life at the time. For me, this is what the movie is really about: how familiar and professional matters were changing, going to the direction of a more capitalist way of life, loosing the simplicity and quiet way of living. 

The cinematography is outstanding. The images that tell so much without words are timeless. Cinema can be a way of documenting life by fictional stories, and the Roy Andersson's film does that to me. One disturbing aspect of the time, though, is that a 15 years old teenager looked like a 10 years old today's child. I had to tell myself all the time that they were 15, 16 years old, to remember that those were not children kissing and sleeping together. But it was weird anyway. I don't know if it was intentional, to mark how young they were. 

Nordic cinema I adore. Its views about human beings, life, the world  are so incredibly translated in movies. I was glad to reach an older Swedish production, to be a part of this document of a way of life that is no more - without nostalgia or regret (just a bit, maybe). But it is mainly an objective yet poetic view, I think. There is no "ah, but the old ways of living are  better and such", only a delicate and contundent vision of how things change. In that matter, the youth can carry the first marks of the transformation, and, at the same time, they can hold on beautifully to what really matter in life and is worth still, such as love. 

A Swedish Love Story (En Kärlekshistoria). Directed and
written by Roy Andersson. With: Ann-Sophie Kylin, Rolf
Sohlman, Anita Lindblom. Sweden, 1970, 115 min., Stereo, Color.