Better days

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Movie
German title Better days
Original title Svinalangorna
Country of production Sweden
original language Swedish , Finnish
Publishing year 2010
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Pernilla August
script Pernilla August
Lolita Ray
Susanna Alakoski (novel)
production Helena Danielsson
Ralf Karlsson
music Magnus Jarlbo
Sebastian Öberg
camera Erik Molberg Hansen
cut Åsa Mossberg
occupation

Better times (Original: Svinalängorna ) is a Swedish film drama and the feature directing debut of Pernilla August from the year 2010. In the film adaptation of the novel Svinalängorna of Susanna Alakoski must Leena Moilanen, played by Noomi Rapace , visit her dying mother and reluctantly with grapple with their own past. Leena grew up in Sweden in a poor Finnish immigrant family who fell into alcohol and fell apart. The film was a great success with critics, won multiple awards and opened in German cinemas on December 8, 2011.

action

Leena's birthday starts in the morning with her two daughters surprising her with a cake. It seems like a happy family moment, only interrupted by a phone call that Leena quickly gets rid of and that she says was nobody. But the phone rings again and at the other end is Ystad Hospital , which announces that her mother is dying. Leena doesn't want to know anything about it, but her husband Johan sets off with her and the children to see Aili Moilanen, Leena's mother. Reluctantly and with cool emotional distance, Leena rides along. She herself remembers her bad childhood again and again while driving, so that she and almost her entire family cause an accident.

Leena grew up as the eldest daughter of a Finnish immigrant family in a prefabricated building in a poor housing estate. The family is poor and their father is unemployed. Leena and her mother have to clean rich people. Everyone has smaller dreams that they want to come true. The father dreams of making money with special sunflowers, while the mother, who was once a good swimmer before the war, hopes that her daughter will become a second Esther Williams . Parents love each other dearly, but their own failure in life means that they drink more and more and become addicted to alcohol, so that at night they not only celebrate, but also beat, yell at and beat each other.

When Leena arrives at the hospital with her family, she is very distant and initially claims that Aili is not her mother and wants to leave again. Johan cannot understand his wife's behavior and introduces Aili to her granddaughters. But Aili has only one wish, she wants to see her husband Kimmo and be with him. So Leena drives with her family to Aili's apartment, where she once grew up herself, and finds a shabby place that she first cleans. She takes this with her to such an extent that Johan wonders what is wrong with her, but she doesn't answer, grabs the urn with her father's ashes and takes it back to the hospital. There she gives it to her mother, who is very happy about it and asks Leena to be buried next to her Kimmo when she has died. She asks for one last cigarette and tries to apologize to Leena for the fact that they might have had to return to Finland because Kimmo had never been able to settle in Sweden.

Instead, Leena had seen a father who was becoming more and more alcoholic, who, among other things, ruined Christmas parties while being drunk and half-naked, beating his wife over and over and also beating Leena over and over again. Aili tried to protect her family from him, but she too became addicted to alcohol and kept Kimmo in the apartment after she had kicked him out. Since she loved her husband dearly, he always managed to come back with his love oaths and promises. Leena manages to win swimming competitions with anger about her life, but nobody cares anymore at home. The parents increasingly neglect and Leena begins to take care of her little brother Sakari and to protect him from his parents. One day rescue seems to be near when two social workers appear. But they are only interested in the fact that Sakari is finally going to school again and, despite Leena's begging to take Sakari with her, leave the apartment again. Thereupon Kimmo completely loses his temper and beats his wife so hard that Leena later found her unconscious and bloody on the floor. The emergency doctor appears with the police and other social workers who take the children out of the family. Here Leena and Sakari go their separate ways.

In the hospital, her mother justifies herself that it wasn't all bad and that there were also nice parties with Leena's father and that he was a great dancer with whom she liked to dance. But that makes Leena angry and she yells at her mother. The parties were just a "disgusting filth full of vomit, piss and shit". It was because of this “Finnish disgust” that Sakari perished and not because he was “just unlucky”. After he was torn from the family, the changing stays in asylums disturbed the quiet boy more and more, he was never happy again. As a teenager he was also addicted to drugs and was only found days after his death, emaciated to 45 kg.

Leena can no longer bear the sight of her mother, rushes to her parents' house and wants to leave immediately. But Johan still doesn't know, so he asks her what's going on, after all, he would have helped her see her mother. But Leena freaks again when she suddenly sees her children in Sakari's clothes. She doesn't want that and rips things off her sleeping children. Johan then tears the wildly thrashing Leena away from her frightened children and Leena yells, screams and hits Johan. He can overwhelm her and the argument is interrupted by the phone call stating that her mother has died. Leena breaks down crying. After she confesses how much she blamed herself for the situation and how much she should have tried harder to save Sakari, Johan stands by her side.

Leena finally visits her mother's deathbed and slips her long-lost wedding ring on her and remembers how much her mother loved her father and how happy they were both, despite all the alcohol and misery.

occupation

Tehilla Blad played already in the Millennium films blindness , condemnation and forgiveness the child's version of the figure of Noomi Rapace . Her two siblings Alpha Blad and Junior Blad played by her side. While Junior mimes her brother in the film, Alpha plays her daughter Marja. And Naomi's husband at the time, Ola Rapace , also played her husband Johan in the film.

criticism

In the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet , Hynek Pallas said that this “masterfully crafted film” does not only develop the ability to move to tears when viewed for the first time, but when “the second or third time”. He praised the direction, the script, the editing, the music and the camera and couldn't help but praise how well Outi Mänenpää and Ville Virtanen played their roles, because they weren't just disgusting, but always tried to do the right thing to do.

In the Swedish Arbetarbladet , Bodil Juggas said that Pernilla August turned this “almost perfect film” into a “violent psychological drama, which is about wounds that never heal, suppressed pain and a bond between Mother and Child ”succeeded.

Annika Gustafsson praised in the Swedish morning newspaper Sydsvenskan that August had the obvious ability to tell in clear rhythmic pictures and that her creative visual imagination made the film even better. And she praised the actors who would play believable and strong in their not always easy roles.

Awards

publication

The film had its world premiere on September 6, 2010 at the Venice International Film Festival . And after the film was shown at the Filmfest Hamburg and the Filmfest Nordische Filmtage Lübeck , it opened on December 10, 2010 in Sweden. The film then celebrated further theatrical releases in other countries and was shown at several international film festivals, where it also received several awards. Since then, the film has grossed approximately $ 5.3 million worldwide. The film opened in Germany on December 8, 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reasons for approval ( memento of the original dated November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed November 11, 2013.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fsk.de
  2. ↑ Better times . Translated from the Swedish by Sabine Neumann. With an afterword by Karen Nölle and Christine Gränke. edition five, Graefelfing 2011, ISBN 978-3-942374-10-1 .
  3. ↑ Hynek Pallas: Svinalängorna en fullträff on svd.se of November 8, 2010 (Swedish), accessed on August 21, 2011
  4. ↑ Bodil Juggas: Skickligt om sår som inte läks on arbetarbladet.se of December 11, 2010 (Swedish), accessed on August 1, 2011
  5. ↑ Annika Gustafsson: Längorna i rätta händer on sydsvenskan.se of December 10, 2010 (Swedish), accessed on August 21, 2011
  6. ↑ Official press release at oscars.org, October 13, 2011 (accessed November 5, 2011).
  7. ↑ SVINALäNGORNA (BEYOND) on boxofficemojo.com (English), accessed on August 21, 2011