Stockholm My Love

Finally! a 100% cure for insomnia. Commentary states Sweden is one of the happiest countries in the world - you certainly would not get that impression from this melancholic, downbeat, tedious, navel-gazing film consisting of a series of gloomy views of Stockholm in winter. If you make to the end credits, you may need to call the Samaritans, or celebrate your masochism..

Whilst seemingly contemplative and questioning happiness or is it contentment the film triggers thoughts of place, belonging, loss and happiness. The use of repetitive images and secequences act like a visual rhyme that emphasises and underpins the journey through the city both in space and time.

Whilst it might be thought of as downbeat in fact it seems more a celebration and as implied in the title about love for the city where life love and loss have meaning.

Thoughtful idea for a film in a time when place, belonging and identity are something increasingly problematic for many. Also a film that stayed with me visually.

This film is certainly not a drama, nor a musical (as the IMdB genre tags have it), though a dramatic event and music are central to its purpose. And it's not 'easy viewing'. It's been described here as boring and pretentious, and such a description cannot easily be dismissed. And yet, at the end I decided it had been time well spent, though perhaps a little less time might have been adequate for its task. Some of the images are very beautiful indeed and relate to the fact that the narrator (and only character) is an architect. She uses her reflections on certain places in Stockholm (especially churches) as a way of coming to terms with her involvement in a fatal road accident. Such a coming-to-terms is a slow and often repetitive process, and although at times the film is turgid, it ultimately feels meditative and redemptive.

Stockholm is not the only syndrome.

"Dad" is not the only word.

Neneh Cherry is not the only actor.

It reminded me a little of Robinson in Space (1997). From the description on IMDB of that much earlier work: "Robinson is commissioned to investigate the unspecified "problem of England." The narrator describes his seven excursions, with the unseen Robinson, around the country."

But here the narration is drab and tired-out, so low-key. At any moment, it seemed like Neneh Cherry's character would decide she was more in the mood for a trip to Dignitas than a snail's pace mooch around Stockholm.

A film that makes you realise it is not inappropriate to walk out of a home cinema. (I gave it 24 minutes before I found myself out on the street.)

An architect (Neneh Cherry) skips her lecture on Swedish architecture and wanders around Stockholm coming to terms with a fatal road accident she was involved in a year ago.

There is only one character, who speaks predominantly as a voice over. This is varied by interludes of Swedish music, including songs by Cherry herself, whose pleasing voice lends itself to narration. In turns, she explains Stockholm's notable buildings, recounts the story of the accident, and muses philosophically, as one does on long walks.

The film lacks not only plot, but purpose. We learn little about Stockholm, and the philosophising is shallow and leads nowhere, though the film is the better for not trying to put over any particular political or moral point. Stockholm does not look particularly attractive, and the music is not memorable. There is, however, something about the film that has stayed with me: a sense of place, and of love for that place, and beauty in the mundane; the idea that whatever you look closely at seems to look back at you. Perhaps we do not look at our surroundings closely enough.

This is not a film for everyone, or indeed for anyone not in the mood for a guided cinematic meditation set in a rather bleak urban environment. If you don't 'get' slow cinema (yes, that is a thing) then this is not for you.