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Reviews
Händelser vid vatten (2023)
What's the Swedish for anticlimax?
Warning: spoiler alert. I'm a great fan of skandi noir, but this isn't it. After six excruciating episodes that do nothing but set the depressing scene of backward backwater country trash and hippie intruders, we find it was all just a case of mistaken identity and unnecessary action to protect an innocent suspect.
The characters all seem to spend too much time underdressed for the freezing environment, and spend too much time between baths. OK, they're in the 1970s, but the production lays that on so thick you can smell it.
It makes the Appalachian inbreds in the wonderful film Deliverance look like social and cultural giants.
If, like me, you resist your better judgment and persist in the hope it will all come together, think again. Otherwise you'll end up writing a review like this one.
Tod von Freunden (2021)
Extraordinary till the end
Covid lockdown has been a succession of scandi-noir series, many of which I struggle to remember for long. Not this one! Centred on a family tragedy and the competing perspectives around what actually happened, each of the series' eight episodes offers one character's point of view. The acting is extraordinary, the camerawork and editing brilliant, and the actual events gradually unfold themselves (masterful editing) with all their dramatic and tragic consequences.
Up to episode 6 I would have rated this way off the 10-scale, but the final two episodes brought it back down to a 10: some perfunctory yet unnecessary script-writing and plotting spoilt an otherwise brilliant examination of family secrets. Difficult not to feel empathy with each of the characters, particularly the four teenagers.
The highlight is Karl the autistic son's episode, judiciously laced with anime sequences that beautifully capture both his artistic and autistic sensibilities.