Stepping Off the Ingmar Berman Path

"Two thumbs up!" - Ernest and Roeper and the Movies

It's not just the English and the Finns - Swedes are strange too! I just finished watching Under solen, a Swedish film about a 40-year-old male virgin. But unlike the recent American film with a similar situation, the People of Long Winters do not play it for laughs, oh indubitably no! Instead we are treated to a tearful, dramatic confession of virginity (trembling is involved), followed by a subdued, pastoral, Rocky-style sex training montage. All accompanied by a Titanic-style Gaelic score. Yeah, it came out one year after Titanic, by which time everyone and everything from rap records to horror movies had gone Gaelic, Gaelic, Gaelic. Rent it today!

Now I am going to watch au hasard Balthazar, a French New Wave movie about a noble donkey.