A Man Called Ove | Little White Lies

A Man Called Ove

30 Jun 2017 / Released: 30 Jun 2017

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Hannes Holm

Starring Bahar Pars, Filip Berg, and Rolf Lassgård

An elderly man wearing a dark jacket, cap, and trousers stands on a path between buildings in a rural setting.
An elderly man wearing a dark jacket, cap, and trousers stands on a path between buildings in a rural setting.
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Anticipation.

Sweden's 2017 Oscar hopeful finally rolls out in the UK.

3

Enjoyment.

A comedy which aims squarely to haul in the "silver dollar".

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In Retrospect.

Owns its own constant lapses into icky sentiment.

An elder­ly wid­ow­er con­sid­ers end­ing it all in this Dick­en­sian com­ic fable set in and around a Swedish hous­ing estate.

This size­able dol­lop of sac­cha­rine mush scored a Best For­eign Film nom­i­na­tion at the 2017 Acad­e­my Awards, and it’s not dif­fi­cult to see why. It ticks box­es and doles out light­ly sen­ti­men­tal plat­i­tudes about how to make the painful busi­ness of liv­ing that tiny bit more bear­able. Yet, it does what it does with a sat­is­fy­ing and unabashed pre­ci­sion, nev­er try­ing to hide what it is and what it real­ly wants to achieve. Which is to make you laugh and cry and laugh again.

Lum­ber­ing, bari­tone mon­ster Ove (Rolf Lass­gård) lives alone on a quaint hous­ing estate. He spends his time mon­i­tor­ing the behav­iour of his neigh­bours, wait­ing for them to slip up or break the rules so he can pounce out the door and snap at them. He’s a can­tan­ker­ous old fart, but his sour world­view has been augured by the fact that his wife – the only per­son who ever real­ly under­stood his over­ly-fas­tid­i­ous man­ner – recent­ly suc­cumbed to can­cer. While plac­ing flow­ers on her tomb­stone, he vows to join her soon. Such is his deter­mi­na­tion to take care of busi­ness, he heads home, hooks a noose to his liv­ing room light fit­ting, and plans a meet­ing with the infi­nite. And then…

Adapt­ed from Fredrik Backman’s best­selling nov­el, A Man Called Ove is sol­id, like­able main­stream film­mak­ing which pulls no punch­es when it comes to deliv­er­ing its ultra-affir­ma­tive life lessons and stack­ing up expla­na­tions for Ove’s aggres­sive man­ner. On the brink of self-anni­hi­la­tion, our gruff hero even­tu­al­ly starts to see the error of his ways and dis­cov­ers that home sui­cide may not be the the best solu­tion for his prob­lems. A wave of good vibes sweep in on the back of the eccen­tric fam­i­ly next door, espe­cial­ly in the paragon of human com­pas­sion, Par­vaneh (Bahar Pars).

Hannes Holm’s direc­tion nice­ly switch­es between mild com­e­dy and balmy sen­ti­ment while nev­er quite tip­ping the bal­ance too far either way. Lass­gård con­vinces as the mod­ern-day heart­bro­ken Scrooge who, through­out the film and in between var­i­ous bun­gled attempts to take his own life, opens up about his feel­ings and the (mild­ly) trag­ic life he’s led. Not a film to change your view of the world or any­thing like that, but cer­tain­ly a pleas­ant enough sit.

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