You, the Living (2009)

Synopsis: Film Forum is proud to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style... Film Forum is proud to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style (stationary shots, a monochromatic palette of grays and greens) with a meticulous eye for composition (compared by some critics to the work of German painters Otto Dix and Max Beckmann) to yield a brilliant succession of dreamlike tableaux: a bride and her electric guitar-playing groom sail along in a house moving like a train; a distraught man complains of his financial woes while his wife tries to make love to him; a drunken woman shouts “No one understands me” to a bar full of silent patrons; a man waiting in line to buy a train ticket changes queues repeatedly, to no advantage. Running the gamut from quotidian struggles to big philosophical questions of love, sympathy and purpose in an uncaring world, Andersson brings a blast of distinctive Nordic humor to our universal woes.

Although he has directed just four features in four decades, Roy Andersson is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed filmmakers. His previous feature, Songs from the Second Floor, won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and had its U.S. theatrical premiere at Film Forum in 2001. In the mid-1970s, Andersson began a second career as a maker of humorous, exquisitely photographed, world-renowned television commercials for such clients as Citroën, Volvo and Lotto (which Ingmar Bergman once called “the best commercials in the world”). In 1981, Andersson founded Studio 24, a production studio in Stockholm, in order to produce his own movies in total freedom. The Museum of Modern Art will hold a full retrospective of Andersson’s work September 10 – 18, including the premiere of a documentary on the making of You, The Living. --© Film Forum [More]

Director: Roy Andersson

Director: Roy Andersson
Producer: Johan Carlsson
Studio: Tartan Films