Smala Sussie

There have for the last decade been quite a lot of Swedish films about the Swedish world outside Stockholm. The stockholmers have had a lot to laugh about. Little is known here about how the smalltown Swedish inhabitants take that.

But "Smala Sussie" ("Slim Sussie" in English) is funny in more ways than being a hillbilly comedy. The acting by young Björn Starrin, Jonas Rimeika and Tuva Novotny is great. There might be a place for a discussion whether murder and using drugs really is a funny subject. Here it is so however, although everything is far from the Tarantino treatment.

But you have to be Swedish to appreciate this. Or maybe Scandinavian.

This film has a nervous energy that springs from the opening moment and doesn't stop until somewhere in the last third. Dazzling narrative technique, nearly always confusing you at the start of a scene, but somehow moving the story forward at the same time. The characters in the small village are wonderfully flexible - it's almost as if they change as the film's frenetic comedy and absurd plot demand. There is a sombre undertone as well, and it's that that makes some of the moments of resolution in the film somewhat awkward, as if the seriousness were being shoehorned into a farce. This will either infuriate or drive you into gales of exhausting laughter.

One of very few Swedish comedies that I really enjoyed. Instead of (like most Swedish comedies) putting someone through purely embarrassing moments and believing that everyone finds that funny, this movie relies on surprising twists and turns and a witty funny dialogue. In addition a mystery is resolved. Erik returns home when he finds out that his sister Sussie is missing. In his search for her more and more childhood friends get involved in this story. As we get to see the end first, the story then jumps back and forth in time to slowly resolve the plot. This enables the movie to take very surprising and funny twists.

As mentioned, a great dialogue, extra credit to whoever wrote that and to whoever created the different characters. Good acting, funny plot. Doesn't get very much better.

8/10

Hi,

The movie slim Susie is very interesting.when Erik (Jonas Rimeika) comes home from Stockholm in search of his little sister Susie, he finds everything changed in him home town(it means mind of his friends and other known people).Nobody didn't help him to find his sister they used to tell him different stories.But he came to know his sister became a gangster.This is the first time i am watching a Swedish movie.I like the acting Jonas and Tuva.A far cry from the Sweden of Ingmar Bergman, SLIM SUSIE (SMALA SUSSIE) presents a small town world of drugs, crime, and pornography. Erik (Jonas Rimeika) returns to his home town of Bruket after living in Stockholm. He has come to investigate the disappearance of his sister Susie, a former beauty queen whom he is quite fond of. But as he begins to dig into the underbelly of the city, he discovers a world of crime and seedy affairs, and is shocked to discover that his cute little sister is involved in this sordid underworld. SLIM SUSIE is a black comedy that reverses the common "corruption in the big city" theme by looking at the criminal elements in a small town.

regards Arun

I saw this movie a week or two ago at the Seattle intl film festival and it was one of my favorites.

The characters were all very funny in a clumsy and idiosyncratic sort of way. Much like a Coen bros. movie plot they are a bit too dumb and small-town-naive to pull off their objectives without screwing themselves up, but that's what makes it funny, right?

The dialog was great as well, with a few funny Tarantino-esqe side narratives. In fact, the screenplay also reminded me of Tarantino or Guy Ritchie films as it jumped around chronologically and repeated some of the story from different characters' perspectives.

I imagine if you like those directors (well, who doesn't?), you'd find this one very worth your while as well (although a bit less stylized and certainly less violent then most of Tarantino's work which I happen to think is a plus!)