03 May 2011

Musikk for bryllup og begravelser/Music for Weddings and Funerals


'Musikk for bryllup och begravelser' is a film both of us have seen before and the third film I (Gunnar) see from the director Unni Straume ('Til en ukjent' and 'Thranes metode').

The story circles around Sara (Lena Endre) and her ex-husband Peter (Bjørn Floberg), his current wife Helen (Petronella Barker), Peter's young mistress Kaja (Rebecka Hemse) and Sara's lodger Bogdan (Goran Bregovic).
Even if Peter at a rather early stage in the film disappears when committing suicide in the house he - as an architect - has written and where Sara now lives, the story continues to develop around him.
The house so profoundly being a part of himself and his life story also constitutes the terminus of the very same, making it his home and tomb.
Through his life, his work and his choices in life, he has had a major influence on many people and this in combination with a life that comprises minimalism - in his work as an architect - in combination with an excessive private life, not least concerning human relations, makes him a hard to define-person.

The film poses many interesting questions concerning both human relations, secrets in life, honesty and sincerity between persons, the difference between love, passion and desire, in short the meaning of life and living and how your exterior organisation of life not always corresponds with your interior person. The importance of lost moments and how they become essential when your life is on the edge of something dramatic, also constitutes one of the ingredients in this film, as well as questions of guilt and responsibility, revenge and forgivness.
All this is intervowen within a aesthetic framework, so well corresponding to the austere and minimalistic architecture created by Peter.
Aesthetically, I think this film is a pearl, at least during the first 2/3 of the film.
As a picturesque element in the film - picturesque in this milieu, with this aesthetic and with the emotionally inhibited Swedes and Norwegians - we get to meet Goran Bregovic' character and not least his musicians and singers, rending the film a surprising and exhilirating touch.

The acting is in general good and Floberg is - as always - one of the best participants in this oeuvre but I have to say that Lena Endre is shaping her role character, into becoming the centre of the story and catalyzer of events, not only because she has an important role but more thanks to her acting - and the direction of Unni Straume.

As Lisa, the mother of Peter, we see the recently deceased Norwegian 'Prima Donna' Wenche Foss.

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