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pinewizer371
Reviews
Jordskott (2015)
Not an impressive first episode
I had very high expectations on this show as I was really intrigued by the synopsis and its potentially nail-biting mystery. A woman who's daughter inexplicably vanishes in the woods never to be found and then 7 years later a boy goes missing under the same circumstances in the same woods? Come on! It could be one hell of an interesting story!
But as so many times before regarding Swedish television shows it seems like disappointment is once again looking my way.
First of all the script has some very hard to disregard types of holes. For example the female main character is a cop...but keeps asking people for the address of a man who's name she knows. Has she been living under a rock for the past 20-30 years? Not knowing how easy it is nowadays to just go online and look somebody up? Nobody taught her this during her police-training?
Another thing, during the first episode the same character crashes her car trying to avoid hitting a person that suddenly shows up in the middle of the road. It turns out this person is a young girl in a state of chock and can't respond to her surroundings. Now, the community is focused on finding a missing boy, and the local cops are aware of the main characters belief that there might be a link between the unsolved case of her own missing daughter and the recently vanished boy... But not a single cop in the first episode thinks it's worth while to take a little look in the surrounding woods where this girl was discovered by the main character? Not even a little glance? Na, it's just not worth it I guess...
I admit, the main character takes a little look and sure enough she stumbles upon something interesting! Who would have thought! Not the local cops or anyone els I guess...
You know when I watch a really good police show... I don't feel smarter then the cops. The mystery is as mysterious to me as it is to the characters in the show. (True Detective is a great example of this)
In this show not only do I feel smarter than the cops, I laugh at their stupidity.
In another scene the main characters daughter shows up in a dream sequence, I guess, and asks her mother why she gave up looking for her and I cringed during the entire scene. It just seemed so unnecessary, almost like the creators are begging the audience to find them creative and imaginative. Everything about that scene was forced and repetitive. We already know the main character is suffering, we know she feels guilty for not finding her daughter and solving the case. If they really wanted to push that point they could have done it in another way that actually would have been creative instead of just slow and boring.
But Swedish television shows seems to love those to ingredients, slow and boring.
This show has hyped itself as a mysterious one, but if you kind of know what is going on after the very first episode...is it really that mysterious?
I say this, there is something very wrong with Swedish television shows and movies, I have a strong feeling they could not only be so much better but that something in the very fabric or infrastructure of Swedish creative storytelling and movie-making is hindering it, always keeping it slow, boring, and predictable.
Fröken Julie (2013)
A new take on an old story
So this is the first feature film from the recently started production company "Hat on Lady" and its owner Mattias Dimfelt. It's not easy making a movie when you haven't done one before so for a first, this one holds up pretty good.
The movie is also quite nice to look at with some really enjoyable outdoor shots of Skottorp outside of Laholm in Halland, Sweden.
The movie is loosely based on the classical play by the Swedish writer August Strindberg "Fröken Julie" which centers around the complicated love-story between the rich upper-class woman Julie and the servant Jean.
I have to commend the movie makers for daring to mix up relatively unknown actors with more famous and established ones. This is something I hardly ever see in films from Sweden where the former hardly ever gets the chance to play a leading roll right off the bat. In Fröken Julie tough this is the case.
The "new" ones I'm talking about is Nathalie Söderqvist as "Julie" and Klas Ekegren as "Jean". They've both come from the world of theater, drama and films but are hardly known at all in Sweden.
The more known, established ones are Görel Crona and Lina Englund and even tough Nathalie and Klas do OK I must say that the favorite performance for me personally was given by Lina Englund who's poor, Christian serving girl comes off as the most genuine and real.
The score from Mark Ambervill must also not be forgotten. It sounds great and manages to not only capture the "feel" of the film but also gives it a bigger impact.
Also the camera crew shooting and making this movie consisted mostly of film students aged 18 to 25 making their very first feature film and it looks just as professionally made as any other movie.
To conclude, for anyone who's ever been captivated by the Swedish writer August Strindberg's classical story of Julie and Jean this movie offers a different perspective which is well worth the watch.