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BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE
Director: Tuva Novotny Cast: Pernilla August, Anders Mossling, Malin Levanon, Peter Haber, Mahmut Suvakci, Lancelot Ncube, Olle Sarri MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:34 Release Date: 9/20/19 (limited); 9/27/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 26, 2019 Since she was a child, Britt-Marie's (Pernilla August) life has been centered on order—a place for everything and everything in its place, a list for every chore and every chore on the list. There's a reason for that, revealed late in Britt-Marie Was Here, but the story is about the consequences of living such a life, when everything suddenly and unexpectedly becomes chaos and uncertainty. That's because Britt-Marie, a 63-year-old homemaker who spends her days cleaning and readying dinner for her husband Kent (Peter Haber), discovers that her spouse of 40 years has been having an affair. Looking for a job, she finds one in the small Swedish town of Borg. Britt-Marie packs her things, hops on a bus, and starts a new life as the head of a youth center. This also, by default, makes her the coach of the center's soccer team, although she doesn't know a thing about the sport. All of this is so light, in terms of story and character (based on Fredrik Backman's novel), that it threatens to float away, as just another story about a character realizing that life isn't over until it's finished. It's so pleasant, though, that the familiarity hardly matters. There's August's performance, which suggests a woman trapped in a prison of routine and tidiness, which is of her own making and with a foundation of grief that she has never truly confronted. Through flashbacks and narration, the screenplay by Anders August, Øystein Karlsen, and director Tuva Novotny shows us the source of that pain and puts us in the mindset of the character, as she tries to cope with it, as her morning mantra goes, "one day at a time." This is just the right amount of melancholy to ground what is otherwise a comedic, optimistic, and pretty predictable tale. Britt-Marie has to get out of her shell to reach a group of misfit and economically disadvantaged kids, to make friends with locals whose opinion of outsiders is either welcoming or suspicious, and, naturally, to see the possibility of starting a romance with a cop (played by Anders Mossling), who actually appreciates Britt-Marie for the person she is. Since the story is formulaic, the climax is a Big Game (although the winning conditions are amusingly underwhelming). By that point, though, Britt-Marie and Britt-Marie Was Here have so grown on us that the story's obviousness doesn't matter. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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