Together

Tillsammans; drama, Sweden / Denmark / Italy, 2000; D: Lukas Moodysson, S: Lisa Lindgren, Gustav Hammarsten, Emma Samuellson, Michael Nyquist

Stockholm, '75. Elisabeth and her children, son Stefan and daughter Eva, leaves her husband Rolf who was beating her, and moves in to the house of her brother Göran. 20 more people lives in his house, all with socialist views, who constitute a community where meat, Television, Coca-Cola and other things are forbidden. New tenants bring changes in the community which cause that other tenants leave it. In the end, Elisabeth again makes up with Rolf.

Drama "Together" is a bizarre and hermetic ode to liberalism, somewhere on the brink between "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Breaking the Waves", which symbolically speaks about community-family and their real and fake members (the strange socialist commune will reduce its number of members from 20 to 10 after new tenants bring changes into it). Swedish director Lukas Moodysson crafts a picture of a realistic life, filling the story with all kinds of anecdotes - for instance, Lasse is arguing with Anna because she is walking around the kitchen without her underpants or pants, so that her "vagina could be on fresh air"; the 14-year old Fredrik admits to his coeval Eva that he never met someone with the same glasses prescription as her. Due to the rather chaotic nature, the film has flaws, but when during the closing credits the song "S.O.S." by ABBA starts to play, every aspect and part somehow fits in right into their place.

Grade:+++