Pure

Alicia Vikander's is stunning. Her highly intuitive, effortless and evocative acting talent reminds me in some ways of Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter's Bone." Or Frida Hallgren or Helen Sjöholm in "As It Is in Heaven" (Så som i himmelen).

I could have imagined the movie going in several different directions –– and I did, and wondered throughout. For a more "feel good" experience, I might have preferred a couple of them. Still, it's an intriguing and thought-provoking little movie and well worth the time and effort. Some pretty big lose ends notwithstanding.

Good acting throughout.

Bravo!

What would you do to get out of the guat (thanks John Hughes) you find yourself in? This is the central question posed by our protagonist played by Alicia Vikander in an early role before embarking into Hollywood superstardom. In a story w/echoes of the Dardennes' Rosetta, we have a woman whose found her calling in life but due to a mistake in judgment, she'll do anything to keep her station. At once harrowing, traumatic but ultimately uplifting, Pure's heroine gets her due but at what cost?

Pure (2010)

A stunning performance by young actress Alicia Vikander and intelligent direction (and strong writing) from Lisa Langseth makes this Swedish film a must see.

When 20 year old Katarina finds an escape from her troubled life in a symphony hall, life turns completely around. And she almost keeps up with the change. But her naivite and powerlessness get in her way, as more powerful or misdirected people in the symphony read her signals the wrong way.

That simple set up is all Vikander needs to make her character writhe and shine and fall into despair on screen. It's psychologically tough, beautifully filmed, paced with a sense of importance. I really liked this all around. The story does in ways fall into a familiar power dynamic between older man and younger woman, and so there is by the end something missing there. But other aspects compensate, and Vikander makes small details revelations throughout.

Things like music, poetry, philosophy etc are essential details of this film, but otherwise have nothing to do with its theme.

That theme is the corruption of innocence. Which puts it in company with other films like "The Go Between", "Rosetta", "Mouchette" or "Lord of the Flies", but "Pure" is realistic rather than romantic. The director, Lisa Langseth, probably has much in common with Anthony Trollope, who was once described as "compared to Trollope, even Balzac is a romantic".

The entire film depends on the performance of Alicia Vikander as Katarina, and that performance is flawless, first as a young girl of passion, through her disillusionment, and, at the very last scene, to her "graduation".

And special mention should be made of Per-Eric Winberg's music soundtrack, both his own compositions and those he selected from other composers are first class.

Great to see a strong female lead, with full-on anger management issues, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. She's got plenty to be pissed about.

Vikander aces her first full feature. You can see why, her career kicked on from there. But I lean towards the lesser end of the User Reviews.

The music and philosophy props don't seem deeply felt, or played. The ingenue's progression with the older male, you've seen it all before.

How it subverts itself, you haven't seen that too many times. Brava!