Vaxdockan

A very strange and rarely seen Swedish fantasy about a night watchman who falls in love with a showroom dummy he takes home with him. In any Hollywood film this would be a wacky comedy, but since we're in Sweden, it's a thoughful study of loneliness and alienation, with Per Oscarsson once again excellent in the lead role.

Mr. Lundgren - first name unknown - is an unhealthily introvert 30-something fella who works as a night watchman in a mall and lives in a boarding house in the suburbs of Stockholm. Despite many other lively tenants and a clear romantical interest from his landlady, Lundgren is incapable to make social contact and feels incredibly lonely. After a banal robbery at his workplace, he smuggles home a mannequin doll and develops an intense (and very vivid) relationship with it. After a while, Lundgren's neighbors grow increasingly curious about the noises coming from his apartment, but also his own mental state and imagination deteriorate.

Admittedly this sounds like the premise of a trashy and tongue-in-cheek exploitation flick, but in the capable hands of director Arne Mattson ("Mannequin in Red") and thanks to a downright phenomenal performance by Per Oscarsson ("Sult"), "The Doll" became a saddening drama and a complex mental character study.

The script is undeniably influenced by "Psycho", but it certainly isn't a rip-off. Two years after the release of Hitchcock's horror monument, the only real thing that Arne Mattson copies is the mystifying persona of Norman Bates. Like Bates, Lundgren superficially seems like a privileged man. He's handsome, polite, well-dressed, independent, ... But beneath the surface there's a deeply disturbed and potentially dangerous mind in need of help.

Should you search for action or cheap horror thrills, "The Doll" will sorely disappoint you. It's slow-paced (and perhaps a tad bit overlong) but uncannily atmospheric, beautifully filmed, brilliantly acted, and compelling straight from the eerie opening song until the desolate climax.

"Vaxdockan" (Mannequin)is entirely Per Oscarsson's spectacle. He demonstrates his entire range of talent and folly as an actor. The trademark of Per O. In this dark drama, as a deserted and lonely night watchman, thirsting for love and recognition. Director Arne Mattsson delivers one of his best films. This version of the well-known story, initially suggested by E.T.A. Hoffmann ("Der Sandmann") and perhaps in this case inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". "Vaxdockan" is set in a house of strange people. Besides Per Oscarssons character, there's a lonely, bitter and deformed landlady, a young pipe neck and Tor Isedal. A rare Swedish actor who has played more villains and dangerous men than anyone else in Scandinavian cinema. In this film he has some interesting lines to deliver as well: "I have heard many strange things. I have been through a lot of strange things, but being accused of having seduced a mannequin... We all have our ideal woman. If you keep quiet about mine, so I'll keep quiet about yours."

Per Oscarsson plays a lovesick lonelybird nightwatch at a larger store when he becomes mesmerized by a mannequin doll. When he, one night, manage to steal and take this wax lady home, she becomes his imaginary friend. He is not insane, just very very lonely and isolated. In the beginning she is placed in his small shack, where he kind of talks to himself but also playfully to her.......But didn't the doll just move? The residents of the house where he lives play an important role to this story. Everybody is pretty poor, and live with their own problems and conflicts, but as the sweet and shy virgin man starts to change and act erratic and aggressive, the others start to fear the worst.

Creepy! In the hands of another director the story and certainly some of the scenes would have come out as really silly and unconvincing, but veteran Arne Mattsson treats this whole scenario with a flair backed up by the psychologically strong script that perfectly balances between insanity and reality. I consider this brilliant little film with the equally stunning Per Oscarsson in the lead as one of the strongest studies of insanity there ever was, done small scaled but with ultra atmospheric photo and gritty, believable actors. Actor Oscarsson has, from the mid 1940's to the late 1970's, been playing odd, solitude, frustrated and very eccentric characters on film in Sweden and this may for all, be his lifetime achievement.

It feels kind of strange that I, after I watched this film again, remember that in TV shows and documentaries have seen real men declaring that they prefer to live with a synthethic "doll" rather than with living women. It's as if a part of the mysteries and dark corners of humanity have been exposed so much and normalized so hard in our informative age, in such a degree that real mens' sexual relationship with mannequins can become reality TV show entertainment.

The films director, Arne Mattsson, who became one of Swedens most prolific and talented, made in total 61 films where sex, crime or insanity were the major themes/subjects, from the early 1940's to the mid 70's. In his merit list there are for many Swedes famous titles as Farlig Vår 1949, the legendary succéss of Hon Dansade en Sommar 1951 (She Danced One Summer - worldfamous nude swimming in twilight!), the atmospheric criminal/ thriller comedies of Damen i Svart 1957 (Lady In Black), Vita Frun 1962 (Lady in White)och Mannekäng i Rött 1958 (Mannequin In Red) which clearly inspired Mario Bava to shoot the first considered giallo film , Blood and Black Lace 1964), his masterpiece Yngsjömordet 1966(Dramatizing Swedens last death sentence case), Mördaren - En helt vanlig person 1967 (The Murderer - A completely normal Person!), the sex drama Ann och Eve - De Erotiska 1970 and the really nasty exploitationfilm Smutsiga Fingrar 1973 (Dirty Fingers). They were suspenseful and beautiful, and showed, when Mattsson was at his best, a sophisticated and powerful sense of "mise-en-scene".