YOU, THE LIVING aka DU LEVANDE
Year: 2007
UK: Artificial Eye
Cast: Jessica Lundberg, Elisabet Helander, Björn Englund, Leif Larsson, Ollie Olson, Kemal Sener, Håkan Angser, Brigitta Persson, Gunnar Ivarsson
Director: Roy Andersson
Country: Sweden
Language: Swedish (English subtitles)
UK: 93 mins
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong comic sex scene
UK Release Date: 28 March 2008 (Limited Release)
UK Distributor
Synopsis
YOU, THE LIVING can be seen as a gentler companion piece to Roy Andersson's 2000 Cannes Jury prize-winner, SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR and takes a slightly lighter tone in presenting a series of tragi-comic vignettes from modern life. An assortment of washed out interiors provide the backdrop for a motley crew of characters: a stout depressive and her long-suffering husband; a young girl with an unrequited crush on a rock musician; an Arab barber taking sweet revenge on a racist customer; couples with too much to say, or too little; and a diligent tuba player...
Andersson's latest achievement again uses farce of the darkest hue to address existential strife in an oblique and surreal fashion. His tableaux vivants are haunting compositions of blackly humorous despair and depravity that brand themselves indelibly on one's brain. Andersson's sensibility walks a fine line between derision and sympathy, pessimism and very dim hope. In particular, the deadpan, bravura finale is destined to leave audiences floored.
It is his fourth feature film and was the Official Selection - Cannes Film Festival 2007 and selected as Sweden's Oscar entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
From the director
"My film is composed of a series of tableaux that illustrate the human condition. The characters represent different facets of human existence. They face problems, large and small that range from issues of day-to-day survival to the big philosophical questions. I hope that YOU, THE LIVING will give audiences the impression of watching moments of their own existence.
"YOU, THE LIVING is about the human being, about her greatness and her miserableness, her joy and sorrow, her self-confidence and anxiety. A being at whom we want to laugh and also to cry. It is simply a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy about us". - Roy Andersson