A woman and a man, stressed by their biological clock. Need and desire. They meet at the cemetery, tending their husbands/parents grave. Farmer Benny outside a somewhere-in-Sweden-town and the librarian Desirée, the desired, in town. The farm is badly in need of a woman's tending care and the mondaine librarian desires a sometimes-relationship to calm down her biological clock. Need and desire. Both are everything but not the others type (he likes Police Academy/Polisskolan, she the film The Piano) – significantly seen how they have their coffee. Several times a bridge is crossed in the film – a symbol to bring them together, living on two different stars? The films ending climax is a hollywoodending with a car chase, climaxing in the middle of this bridge. In the films beginning the bleak widow just manages the next hour of her day. But seen by a man, she discovers more and more the pleasure to be a woman. But Benny ends their stressed sex relationship. He meets nurse Anita, being much nearer his and the farms needs. Desirée, feeling as an outsider with his friends, she is tense of shame when Benny is with her friends. Asking her on the cemetery's bench "Are you ashamed of me?" – she answers with silence. Book and film, a great Swedish success, mirrors the Swede well. It highlights many themes: one of these is the for Sweden so typical expression 'klass-resa'/class-travel (social rise). The famous Swedish model was mainly designed for the working-class people who longed for a better life. Many weren't aware of the class travels transitional conflicts. It meant to be for a time a "marginal man"/woman (a 1937-E. Stonequist-expression). Desirée knows who Lacan is, (Benny pronounces it as 'Lacong') and listens with pleasure to Rigoletto while Benny snores beside her. A nearer look though tells that the modern, intellectual Desirée still treats Lacan, Soushi and opera not quite natural; she is still on her way.The class-travel is of course education and a good salary but also a maturing process. When not knowing to whom she should be loyal, to the past or the future, she should take Stonequists 1937-advice: "I am myself". How handles the book and film the lacanian Nom du Père? Both have good-enough-parents. Hers, an army man, supported by his at-home-wife but they "never touched each other", career focused and daughtercoppied. Bennys parents married with the farms need in focus, in grief that he does not find a woman for the farm. In many ways Desirée is a todays modern Swedish woman and in need of a man when the biological clock rings too loud. Knowing that Anita has entered Bennys every-day-life, she refused it in the film and book, Desirée offers Benny a deal: to pregnant her as "father unknown". Denying the latter he wants to share parenthood. The interesting question is: can the farmer father and the town mother cope with parenthood, when the idea has become a daily life reality for her in town and him on the farm? Of course have both school-read the Swedes Carl Jonas Love Almquists Sara Videbeck/Det går an (1839) in which Sara explains for Albert why marriage is a lie, offering a life together without living together. The Swedes live with Carl Jonas Love Almquists spirit, accused for never proved murder. Desirée and Benny have in the book the courage to jump over his shadow – why not in the hollywoodinspired film? Fore sure had Desirée in the book Sara Videbeck in her mind. Everett Stonequist, The Marginal Man, a Study in Personality and Culture Conflict (1937). He described the marginal man as "one who is poised in psychological uncertainty between two or more social worlds, reflecting in his soul the discords and harmonies, repulsions and attractions of these worlds." And: Mats Trondman, Bild av en klasssresa, Carlssons förlag 1994. Dedicated to the Swedish class traveller Mikael Hörnlund, his birthday, 7th of October....
0 out of 0 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
