September 13–20, 2001

movie shorts

Together

by Sam Adams

recommended

It’s November 1975, and in Sweden, the revolution is still going on. In a nondescript house on a cozy suburban street, the members of the collective known as "Together" are bucking the bourgeoisie, even if no one seems to notice. As envisioned by Lukas Moodysson, who made his debut with the charming Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål), the collective house is a Day-Glo rabbits’ warren crammed with pictures of Mao and half-finished bottles of red wine. Apart from the fiery Erik (Olle Sarri), who’s only seduced into lovemaking by the promise that they’ll discuss Marxism-Leninism afterward, the members of Together aren’t particularly political, except insofar as their behavior in the house is concerned. Instead of ideological diatribes, their arguments tend to concern things like whose turn it is to do the dishes, and isn’t washing the dishes a bourgeois concept anyway?

Moodysson, who’s 32, clearly isn’t writing from experience, and he doesn’t seem particularly interested in history. Apart from opening the film with a radio report of Franco’s death — which, of course, prompts a joyous bout of singing and dancing — there’s little to tie the story to any specific time or place. (When Erik leaves to join the Baader-Meinhof, the subtitles don’t even bother to translate it.) Instead, the film is couched as a kind of generalized referendum on the behavior of ’70s leftists, who come in for some pointed if affectionate mocking. There’s Anna (Jessica Liedberg), who’s "decided" to become a lesbian after her divorce from Lasse (Ola Norell); Klas (Shanti Roney), a daffy, luckless-in-love blond with a Prince Valiant cut who’s insistently trying to persuade Lasse to follow his ex-wife’s example and give homosexuality a whirl; Lena (Anja Lundkvist), who uses free love as an excuse to cheat on her boyfriend and later ends up drunkenly trying to seduce a 14-year-old boy; and Goran (Gustav Hammarsten), said boyfriend, a soft-hearted, red-bearded bear of a man who can’t bear to say a cross word to anyone.

It should be mentioned up front that Together isn’t a hatchet job like, say, Forrest Gump, even if it declines to take its subjects as seriously as they take themselves. The real world as it’s shown here is well-worth taking refuge from. That’s especially true for Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren), Gudrun’s sister, who moves into the commune with her son and daughter after her husband Rolf (Michael Nyqvist) splits her lip during a domestic quarrel. But as much as Elisabeth’s arrival sets the commune on end (in entirely predictable fashion), what’s more interesting is the effect this new environment has on her children. At first, of course, they’re resistant; Stefan (Sam Kessel) flies into rages, and Eva (Emma Samuelsson) takes to sitting for hours in the commune’s pastel-painted van. Their father tries to worm his way back into their lives, but a reconciliatory dinner goes horribly when he gets drunk and picks a fight with the restaurant staff, leaving his children standing for hours outside in the street. Inevitably, they’re forced to mature on their own, but what’s interesting is how they find common ground with the two children who have grown up in the commune. At first, Tet and Moon (for so they are called) balk at the new arrivals, calling them the worst name they can think of: "bloody fascist!" But eventually, Stefan begins to share his Legos — Tet has only two blocks carved out of wood, though his father promised to finish the set — and Tet hungrily appropriates his forbidden toy pistol. The exchange goes both ways, though; Stefan soon discovers that as much fun as it is to play war, it’s even more fun to play secret police, especially when he gets to be Pinochet.

Eva meanwhile develops an awkward romance with the son of the family next door, who for all their conventionality are no happier than hers. The mother likes to spy on the commune with a handy pair of binoculars, while the father heads to the basement and masturbates furtively, banging a hammer on his workbench with his free hand to disguise his deed. In other words, things are screwed up all over, and while radical philosophy may help to sever some chains, it imposes restrictions of its own. Together ends with a disappointingly pat endorsement of bourgeois family values, as if all that has gone before has merely been a distraction from getting boy and girl back together. It would probably feel like a cop-out anyway, but it feels especially so because Together has been on the brink of real complexity, only to jettison it in favor of snipping off loose ends that would be better left unkempt.