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At the
Movies Costs of love
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
The most entertaining and often
insightful movie of recent months is Together, a Swedish import about a
1970s hippie household that is as loopy as it is good-natured. It opens with a
bang, the radio announcing that Franco has just died, which produces loud
cheers and an orgy of good-natured hugging. In the beginning you wonder if
youll be able to sort out all the characters living in the commune --
whose name is the Swedish equivalent of the movies title -- but director
Lukas Moodysson quickly establishes who all these people are and what is
bugging them.
The mostly middle-class group already feels crowded when Elisabeth
(Lisa Lindgren), sister of its nondirective leader Göran (Gustav
Hammarsten), asks for refuge after abandoning her hard-drinking husband Rolf
(Michael Nyqvist), who has struck her once too often. She and her two children
are startled by a semi-insane argument going on within the group that leads to
displays of nudity, and the 13-year-old daughter, Eva (Emma Samuelsson),
hastens for solace to the hippie station wagon outside where she can listen to
pop music on her portable tape deck. Her younger brother, Stefan (Sam Kessel),
soon gets lonely and goes to visit his father, but the latter is so preoccupied
with sweeping up the bottles of his last binge that he doesnt get to the
door before his son has given up.
Avoiding moralism, Together makes the communes
idea of open-ended sexual relations mostly ridiculous. When his girlfriend Lena
(Anja Lundqvist) develops a crush on Erik (Olle Sarri), true believer in the
Communist-Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary League, gentle Göran tries to
convince himself he doesnt really mind. The sequel is farcical, since
Erik is at first resistant and will only agree to bed Lena if she promises to
discuss the evils of capitalism afterwards. Even the smiling, ever-active
lesbian Anna (Jessica Liedberg) is seen as wacky rather than dangerous, perhaps
because of her repetitious opening advance: Have you ever tried
meditating?
Together is hardly a document of the Vatican
Commission of Family Relations, but its presentation of the growing-up pains of
Elisabeths children and the son of the judgmental middle-class family
that spies on the commune certainly encourages a responsible view of love. In
fact, the childrens independence and resiliency help create the
movies basically upbeat tone. Their complaints about food prompt one of
its comic highpoints when Göran is led to explain how oatmeal is the
allegorical equivalent of a commune -- the dry, separate flakes cook into warm,
cozy unity. The childrens innocent pursuit of fun leads to the
groups reluctant acceptance of toy pistols and TV, and the children even
stage a successful protest around the kitchen table with banners proclaiming
We Want Meat.
A spontaneous soccer game in the snow provides a delightfully
appropriate ending in which the commune finally suggests a semblance of
community, even enticing the uptight wife next door to find out why her son is
spending all his time away from home. It may, after all, not be too late for
all these zany radicals to grow up and accept the costs of
love.
Innocence, the new Australian
film written and directed by Paul Cox, also deals with love and growing up, but
in a radically different tone. A story of two people who were in love as
teenagers in Belgium just after World War II and discover that their passion is
still alive 50 years later, it largely avoids the sentimentality that usually
overwhelms such material, and refuses to impose a simplistic solution to an
intractable situation.
Andreas (Charles Tingwell) is a retired organist and music teacher
whose wife has died some years before he discovers that his first love lives
nearby. He writes a letter to Claire (Julia Blake), married for 40 years to
dull, routine-ridden John (Terry Norris), who has come to take his wife for
granted. After a brief first encounter, the pair meet again at the cemetery
where bodies -- including that of Andreas wife -- are being dug up and
prepared to be placed elsewhere. In the face of this reminder of mortality,
they realize that their feelings for each other are as strong as ever.
Although Innocence isnt preaching the
irrelevance of marriage vows, it is certainly a call to live life to the
fullest regardless of age. When Claire, a woman who has aged luminously,
proclaims she is too old to lie and walks out on her husband, the
audiences emotional sympathies are with her. Meanwhile, Andreas
daughter seems delighted to meet Claire, but when the latters son tries
to soften his fathers resentment of his wife, John blurts out, You
two have always ganged up on me.
The course of true love is further complicated by health problems:
Andreas suddenly has to go to the hospital for a check-up, where he discovers
that he has an advanced cancer and debates the meaning of beauty and love with
a tolerant priest chaplain. Meanwhile John earns some humorous sympathy by
trying to overcome his earlier indignation; he even tries to cook dinner for
his wife, and shamefacedly concedes that he hasnt told her he loved her
for 30 years. There is no solution to Claires situation, but
many women will find it easy to identify with her when she goes to
Andreas house and asks him to keep her there.
The dramatic conclusion comes when Andreas takes Claire to a
church for which he has the keys and plays organ music with intimations of
transcendent longing. Innocence offers no formula answer to the
questions it raises but makes us feel that all the characters have grown
because of the crisis they have been forced to deal with.
Despite its gentle pace and thoughtful manner, however,
Innocence has its limitations, especially since it is aiming at
something deeper than soap opera. We never learn what Andreas and Claire were
doing in Belgium, or how they lost contact: Instead, we get too many flashbacks
to idealized, ardent sexuality against repeated images of a water wheel and a
railroad station.
Its not hard to look on such teenage passion as innocent,
but dont we need a scene in which they do something besides make love --
perhaps speak of their hopes for the future, and in Andreas case, give a
hint of his later disillusion with conventional religion? Though Cox has gotten
outstanding performances from his three principals --Julia Blake is especially
memorable; in real life, ironically, she is Terry Norris wife --
Innocence seems to have missing pieces. Its affirmation of love as
stronger than death will nevertheless haunt many viewers long after the film is
over.
Joseph Cunneen, NCRs regular movie reviewer, is
working on a book about French director Robert Bresson.
National Catholic Reporter, October 12,
2001
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