La beauté des choses

Watching "All Things Fair" as it showed on TV here in Canada on CBC public network last night, was a treat. Only my sensible, nagging partner coaxing me to get to bed on a work night persuaded me we could trust the VCR to tape the last hour or so. Fortunately for his neck, the tape ran out during the closing credits and not before!

What I liked most about the film (with English subtitles) was the complexity of Sig's world and his relationships. It's a very real world feeling on screen, full of quirky believability, despite Sig's unusual arrangement with his teacher.

Though I know of a real life story resembling Sig's relationship with his teacher that went very differently for the teacher--ending in her virtual ruin--the behaviour of these film characters, the outcome and the aftermath, rings true nonetheless. No character is one-dimensional, even though the film schools us to sympathize with the choices of some and to repudiate others.

It's delightful to find in the credits that the director gave the plum lead role to his son. It takes an admirable trust, I think, to turn over a role like this to one's own young kin, complete with whatever there is in the script that MIGHT be autobiographical.

The female solo vocals in the soundtrack were wonderful. Now, I just need to found out who was singing like a bell whenever love or pain swelled in the story.

I watched this movie by VCD and was so greatly touched by it that I watched it over and over again. There are much more I could feel than what I can put down for now. I really would like to know more about the story, its background and any information about the excellent actors and actress. What I have downloaded from the Internet was far from enough, even worse, most of them are written in Swedish. This totally denied me from having a better understanding of the movie. Unfortunately, I failed to get a Swedish-English/Chinese dictionary to help me out. (There is only a very brief one in Shanghai Foreign Book Trader with a price as high as 260 RMB).

With all my knowledge so far, I think this movie is great in depicting how a youngster copes with whatever comes to him. Despite the sadness and confusion that he has gone through, he also gets the strength out of a kind of impotency. I really admire these artists of their talent in showing us the richness of life and in an elegant and natural way. In my eyes, there should be two kinds of arts: one is what "is", and the other is what "should be". As far as I've seen, many movies are relegated to what is not and what should not be. I just want to ask a favor to whomever you are, if you can help me with a Swedish dictionary and more about the movie. Of course, most importantly, your personal opinion about it.

When reading the synopsis, Bo Widerberg's film evokes understandable skepticism, but as soon as the final credits appear on the screen, and you remember everything that you literally experienced in these 2-and-a-half hours with the hero, it becomes clear that this is not an ordinary drama about romance between a student and a teacher.

The Swedish city of Malmo, at the height of World War II. The pretty middle-aged teacher Viola gets a job at the school where the main character, 15-year-old Stig, studies. These two character decide to get closer with each other, mostly due to the teacher's advances.

Of course, such a relationship is doomed from the very beginning: it goes against morality, against society. However, the actors are providing a very believable and masterful performance.

The biggest advantages of the film are in the acting, Vinderberg Jr. Is very handsome and charismatic. The film's musical accompaniment and script are also okay. I was glad to spend my time watching this film, and I remain very pleased and impressed.

This is the life most men wish they had - an affair with their teacher. But all were not so pretty as the one in here. It's a coming of age story set in a time when men were going off to die in wars and those left behind were trying to make sense of it all in a society that was slowly crumbling. More complicated than now but still relevant in today's youth. All handled brilliantly by the Swedish director, Bo Widerberg, who loves to tell his tales in sensual lighting and locations. He sometimes tends to go soapy but held it in line for hi last work of art. Hewas to pass away a couple of years later. But he left us with another tender story for the soul.

Rape is rape. The "love scenes" are rape. Imagine if the genders were reversed or both the teacher an the child were male, you would see it clearly as rape. Teachers have authority and power over children and just like in the US -- in Sweden it is legally rape for a teacher in a school to have sex with a minor child who attends that school. There is no age under 18 where a minor may consent with a teacher

Again if the genders were reversed in this and it were some 35 or 40 year old guy teacher and his 15-year-old girl student would we be saying, as some reviewers here are, that the "love scenes were "tender" and "beautiful." WTF?