A Swedish Love Story

In the opening scene of Andersson’s début film, very successful at the time with press and audiences, the tone of the narrative is set with apparent ease. At the end of the week, work is over at a small garage. The workers are given their wages. It is the height of summer and time to enjoy life. The two protagonists meet each other in idyllic surroundings, a beautiful park. But Per and Annika meet each other in the grounds of a hospital. Both are visiting relatives, one a grandpa, the other an aunt. In A Swedish Love Story, these old sick people seem to be the first visible signs of the rigid, desperate, disappointed and lonely world of adults. In the meantime, the young lovers cautiously try to get closer to each other. Their love is oblivious to social prestige and class boundaries, but creates a world of its own. An endearing, almost naive universe, but the only hope in this world, because little can be expected of adults.Andersson shows the many details of the hopeless materialism of the adults. Thirty years later, A Swedish Love Story is still convincing, because it is not pamphleteering – for that, Andersson reveals too much feeling for black humour and sympathy with the world.