MOVIES
REVIEWS & LISTINGS BY JUSTIN SOUTHER & SCOTT DOUGLAS
HHHHH = H PICK OF THE WEEK H
Rolf Lassgård brings heart to the black comedy A Man Called Ove
A Man Called Ove HHHHS
DIRECTOR: Hannes Holm
the chaotic lives of those around him
PLAYERS: Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, Börje Lundberg, Ida Engvoll
constantly interfere with his plans.
DARK COMEDY RATED PG-13
anced confluence of black humor
THE STORY: A bitter Swedish widower wants nothing more than to maintain order in his community and to join his wife in the afterlife, but
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OCTOBER 26 - NOVEMBER 1, 2016
THE LOWDOWN: An expertly baland heartwarming sentiment, A Man Called Ove delivers a touching message of acceptance without the faintest hint of condescension.
MOUNTAINX.COM
A Man Called Ove is one of the darkest and funniest black comedies I’ve seen in quite some time. The first 10 minutes alone feature an untimely firing, a visit to the graveyard and two suicide attempts on the part of our eponymous protagonist. If that doesn’t sound particularly hilarious to you, you’ll have to take my word for it. Or bet-
M A X R AT I N G ter yet, go see Ove and decide for yourself. I think you’ll be as pleasantly surprised as I was. Written and directed by Hannes Holm and based on a bestselling novel by Fredrik Backman, Ove plays a bit like a Swedish Gran Torino meets Better Off Dead. Or It’s a Wonderful Life if George Bailey and Mr. Potter had somehow coalesced into one character. But such descriptions don’t come anywhere close to explaining what’s so great about this film. The balancing act it pulls off so masterfully is in depicting Ove as a genuinely loathsome grouch — as opposed to the standard lovable curmudgeon found in countless other films — and inducing the audience to sympathize with him because of his flaws rather than in spite of them. Ove, played with wonderful nuance by Rolf Lassgård, is introduced as nothing short of a hateful bastard, but we eventually love him for it anyway. Ove is the self-appointed tyrant of his small Swedish neighborhood, enforcing arbitrary rules he instated before he was ousted from the block association presidency by longtime friend and rival Rune (Börje Lundberg). Along with his decades-old dead-end job working for the railroad, Ove’s daily rounds checking locks and handwriting unofficial parking tickets in his neighborhood seem to be the only things keeping him going since the tragic death of his wife Sonja (Ida Engvoll). When a new family moves in across the street, backing into his mailbox and thereby thwarting his first suicide attempt, the begrudging friendship he slowly develops with plucky Persian matriarch Parvaneh (an excellent Bahar Pars) is the first of many new attachments that will slowly but inexorably bring him back from the brink. Holm creates pathos through a particularly brilliant structural conceit, utilizing Ove’s (numerous) failed suicide attempts to initiate flashbacks that contribute