Cannes. You, the Living.

For Mike D'Angelo (ScreenGrab), Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor has always seemed "so complete in its unique aesthetic that it was hard to imagine what he could possibly do for an encore. A: More of the same, only with a jauntier, less overtly despairing tone. Indeed, You, the Living, a late addition to the Un Certain Regard section, sometimes feels like a lost silent comedy, with magnificently constructed sight gags... and a recurring Dixieland-jazz score, heavy on the tuba."

Variety's Justin Chang, too, sees You as "a gentler companion piece" to Songs. "But absent its predecessor's anticapitalist spirit and prevailing mood of apocalyptic despair, Andersson's fourth feature is marginally lighter, even sweeter in tone, and its playful use of music - the ensemble includes a punk-haired guitarist, a Louisiana jazz quartet and a woman who bursts into song after a near suicidal rant - turns You, the Living into a sort of miserabilist ode to the foibles of daily human existence, with each scene repping a solo variation on this theme."

"Filmed in washed-out pastels and slightly hazy interiors, the film creates its own parallel and slightly askew worldview much like Andersson's previous film (and the films from Aki Kaurismäki from neighbouring Finland)," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "The key to their success is that their worlds are so recognisable because they reduce the real world to its bare essentials without compromising their characters."

"'Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe's ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot.' This quote from Goethe alluded to in You, the Living... aptly sums up the director's objectives: to add a joie de vivre expressed by burlesque humor to the quite desperate state of the human being and the contemporary world." Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa.

Update, 5/25: "Andersson is a genuine one-off, and to be treasured, not least for the precision of his pacing and his studio-shot compositions, which together contrive to make the very bleakest of scenarios at once affecting and hilarious," writes Time Out's Geoff Andrew.

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 24, 2007 3:06 PM