Roy Andersson’s fourth feature confirms what Songs from the Second Floor already suggested: that this dryly melancholic Swede is one of the cinema’s true originals. A perfectionist on the order of Fellini or Tati (You, the Living looks a little like Tati’s Playtime populated by the cast of a Kaurismäki film), Andersson marshals huge sets and hundreds of extras to create something as quirkily personal as the most humbly-resourced indie film. Formally, it’s a series of fifty short tableaux, virtually all shot with an immobile camera, and each presenting a more or less bizarre scenario. A Dixieland trio performs against an electrical storm, boorish judges swig beer before pronouncing a capital sentence, a wedding night takes place in a house that doubles as a sleeping car – and, to emphasise that Andersson’s underlying purpose is wholly serious, an elderly woman refuses to leave a church until she has accounted for all the modern world’s sins. The many laughs come straight out of left field, though the punchline to the hoary old tablecloth gag is especially delicious.
A tragicomic exploration of life, existence and happiness in fifty scenes, centred around the lives of an overweight woman, a disgruntled psychiatrist, a heartbroken groupie, a carpenter, a business consultant, an elementary school teacher with emotional issues and her rug selling husband, among others.
Angel Face
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You, the Living
