This movie is a lot like the flashback in Summer Interlude: a light-hearted summer fling frowned upon by society in general. Two young people meet in a café at the beginning and decide to run away together; she gets pregnant, life gets hard, they return home, and life gets easier again; then the kid comes, and life gets harder than ever.

It has some problems: I found it hard to believe that their returning home would be so easy as it is after they’ve been basically missing for who-knows-how-long (everybody seems just way too supportive considering the suggestion of dissent that forces them to leave in the first place). And these characters are, at times, almost too repellent to bear. But this is also one of the most impressive things about the movie – it’s not often that you have characters in a movie whose behaviour veers so much between the dispicable and the pitiable, Monika in particular.

It’s really quite amazing how my attitude towards the two main characters changed throughout the course of the story. At the beginning, I was wooed instantly by Harriet Andersson’s Monika, full of life, full of dreams (she’s the one who suggests they flee together). Towards the end, much like the boy Harry, you don’t know if you want to hit her or hug her (ultimately, he does both). When the lovers finally part at the end, there’s no doubt which character has changed the most. To me, Harry at the beginning of the movie was almost like the worst of the Disney heros, just a bland ‘hunk’ with no depth whatsoever. In the end, staring at himself in a mirror, holding the baby, perhaps simply astonished by how much things have changed for him, he’s one of the most admirable male characters I’ve ever seen.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 14th, 2005 at 5:22 pm in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.