By Marti Dols Roca.
Based on the international best seller by Fredrik Backman, it is fair to say that Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove has landed on its feet with nothing less than a European Film Award for Best European Comedy and two Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Ove’s story would be the paradigm of the bittersweet comedy starred by the grumpy old man next door. He is the ruthless vigilante of his residential area in Sweden making no differences between humans, cats, cars and cigarette butts. Nothing escapes Ove and you better watch your bike if left alone in the pedestrians’ area, because even if it’s a present for your girlfriend in the making, you won’t see it again if it gets on this man’s path; a man whose love for Saab is only leveled by his hate for any other car in the world. However, there’s something else in Ove’s mind after having recently lost his wife, Sonja, and being compulsory retired from work: killing himself.
And here, I’m afraid he isn’t as proficient as he is being the sheriff of his neighborhood. Ove, one could say, has earned the right of being grumpy after a series of tragedies in his life: the loss of his dad at an early age; the accident that left her wife in a wheelchair, losing their son in the way; the silent war with his old best pal for the presidency of the neighbor’s community… It’s a comedy, remember?
So when Pregnant Parvaneh (Bahar Pars) and her fool-of-a-husband come along holding hands with two half Iranian half Swedish little girls, Ove starts to grasp that maybe Sonja will have to wait a bit more than expected.
The movie starts with two indicators of what the spectator is about to see:
An initial scene in which Ove argues with a florist’s clerk because he is unable to understand the 2×1 concept; and a beautiful shot of him crossing a railway at dawn, in his way to the cemetery to see Sonja. I.e. A sober and beautifully shot comedy of tragic implications.
As Eric Idle taught us in another comedy of British craft: Always look on the bright side of life. That is precisely what this movie bases his theme on, while portraying an ode to the little beauties of being alive and sharing your love with the ones surrounding you. It’s genuinely funny, sweet and sometimes sour. It shows a good balance between clichés, new takes on old jokes and unique little situations only found in a very northern European setting.
Needless to say, the movie is not perfect: despite his 116 minutes, it sometimes fails in properly planting little subplots that will eventually pay off playing an important role in the resolution of the story; as well as falling in classical mistakes of this kind of movies (such as trying to be too sweet, too funny or too bitter).
However, as its implacable festival run and accolades show, A Man Called Ove it’s a great genre piece and, after all, a heartwarming and thought provoking film to be enjoyed and slowly digested amidst the remakes, super hero movies and shallow 3D super productions that populate the hoardings.
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