Together (2000)

One of the most anticipated movies this year, Tillsammans offers a moving, funny, and evocative document of life in the mid-70s. Set in Stockholm, its story follows the interconnected lives of the residents of a left-wing community and captures the difficulties of building and keeping relationships in a crowded environment.

Writer-director Lukas Moodysson's follow-up to the hugely acclaimed debut Fucking Åmål (a.k.a. Show Me Love) presents a definite crowd-pleaser and a sharp piece of story-telling (closer to British East is East than The Ice Storm). Tillsammans (=together) effectively develops its central theme of friendship and strong solidarity blending 70s nostalgia, sexuality, curiosity, loneliness, and hilarious comedy into an engaging emotional quilt. Once again confirming Moodysson's knack for conveying human emotions and creating hugely likeable characters.

The performances are uniformly excellent (by an almost completely unknown cast) -outstanding are Lisa Lindgren (Elisabeth) igniting the screen as a self-discovering mother, Sten Ljunggren (Birger) as a lonely depressed old man, Gustaf Hammarsten (Göran) as the biggest namby-pamby ever seen, Michael Nyqvist (Rolf) as an alcoholic and abusive father and Jessica Liedberg as the new-born lesbian Anna.

The sense of time and place are never lost in this witty, dramatic story filled with historical references and Moodysson's hand-held documentary style heightens the real feel no end.

Funny, recognizable and on occasion deeply moving, this is Swedish cinema actually worth shouting about. Tillsammans is simply one of the greatest films of the last several years and regarding the strong audience response at the screening I attended, it will no doubt enjoy a long career and attract a mass audience. I can't wait for Moodysson's next film project.

Fmovies: In 1975, in Stockholm, the housewife Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren) gets tired of her abusive and drunken husband Rolf (Michael Nyqvist), and she moves with her teenager daughter Eva (Emma Samuelsson) and her young son Stefan (Sam Kessel) to the hippie community where her brother Goran (Gustav Hammarsten) lives. Goran is a good man, who has an open relationship with his mate Lena (Anja Lundqvist), but does not feel comfortable with the situation. They are welcomed by the group composed of a new-lesbian Anna (Jessica Liedberg), her "almost gay" husband and their children; a gay; and an idealist communist. Eva becomes friend of her neighbor Fredrik, and with the new-arrivals in the commune, lives of the members change. Meanwhile, Rolf misses Elizabeth and his family, stops drinking and tries to approach to Elizabeth again.

"Tillsammans" is a delightful dramatic comedy of this great Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. The story is very human and engaging, with many characters very well-developed that find themselves in a world of freedom and without repression, changing their behaviors and improving as human beings. Very hilarious, at least for South-Americans, the two boys playing of torture as if one of them was the Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. The integration promoted by the soccer game is fantastic. The soundtrack with hits of the 70's is wonderful and another attraction. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Bem-Vindos" ("Welcome")

Together is a good film. It has no plot to speak of, but hey plots are overrated anyway, especially as most of them have so many holes it's impossible to make sense; Together bypasses this by not having one. But instead what we have is a beautifully observed and a very subtle intelligent comedy. Together (initially ironic) follows the discordant inhabitants of a hippie commune in the mid-seventies. It begins with them all literally jumping for joy at the news of Franco's death: so yeah they have their beliefs, where much of the comedy is derived coming as we do from an apathetic cynical new-millennium perspective. Well I laughed: an example; one of the children is called Tet after the Tet offensive during Vietnam!!. And there's the free love, the radical politics, and the ostracisation towards them by their neighbours. All the clichés, but clichés do happen: and as with Show Me Love the writer/director Lukas Moodysson manages to somehow freshen and make them no longer clichéd at all: a very good skill he has.

Coming from the position of being a very big fan of Lukas' first and better film Show Me Love/ Fucking Åmål it's easy to see the similarities between the two. The similarities are what make Together less impressive, that and the story is less interesting: it's not dull but there are just too many characters, it's hard to connect with any one of them. I've seen Show Me Love perhaps too many times, what keeps me coming back again and again is that I really connect with and love the main characters, it's like they are versions of who I once was. Additionally, there are essentially only two of them for Lukas to focus on, whereas with Together there are at least ten. I don't think it's the age thing either as I'm closer to those in Together than Show Me Love (depressingly). There are just too many characters and he can't focus on them all, the film is essentially a snapshot of their lives over the space of a turbulent few weeks. Similar to Show Me Love, only with the same duration: Together needed to be longer. However at the close it does all come together, you begin to feel for the characters. You come to understand and witness some growth in them: they lose some of their radicalism and begin to actually like each other becoming more synergistic as the staunchly dogmatic members leave for more idealistic communes or the Baader Meinhof! I think the point is that the remaining characters may be similar to me, I may have found a connection only there is no time to show this as they only get a few moments of focus each.

There are also some annoying directorial techniques (the same ones as in Show Me Love) like the fast-zoom to close-up where sometimes a static shot would have been better, I hoped he'd learnt to use it sparingly but obviously he loves it too much to ever part. But this is a tiny point, the biggest drawback is that I can see all the characters from Show Me Love transposed onto this film; different ages, different settings but essentially the same: it's like we're watching the parents of the kids in his earlier film. It's not enough to annoy me, but it does detract, it's what makes this film only a nine rather than the definite ten that Show Me Love deserves. Finally, I hope Lukas will make a film better than Show Me Love so he'll not have it like a millstone, but first he has to find different voices for his characters. I hope everything he does will not be compared to that film, but it is a very good film indeed. However, T

Together fmovies. I just saw this at the Minneapolis International Film Festival, and it was quite a gem. Unfortunately, that's all I'll ever be able to refer to it as in the United States. While it is surely an enormous hit everywhere else in the world, or at least in Europe, it will probably never actually be released here because of the silliest thing: nudity. Fucking Amal wasn't opened in more than a couple of theaters, mainly because of the title (couldn't they just translate it "screwing Amal"?). We all missed it over here. I should just buy the DVD, considering how good Together is. Together does owe more than a little credit to Dogma '95 and especially Idioterne, to which it is very similar. Still, it is very creative, well written, and enormously well acted. 9/10

This one is certainly the best movie I've watched in my life. Casting is so natural, and the movie touches many aspects of life from politics to family disputes. Göran has the hardest job in the "family" and hardest job as far as acting is concerned. But he's totally successful. When you watch the movie, you feel like he's acting his own life. The "open relationship" between Göran and his girlfriend, the friendship between the two youngsters, and social/political issues give the movie a lot of spice. Moodyson's another movie, Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love) is also a masterpiece, but this one is more suitable for older people. Briefly, tremendous content and flawless casting.

Every moment of this gem is believable. How rare for a recent film to take mundane human activities and create searing images. We all know these folks, and we have been there ourselves. I have a whole new view of what Swedes are all about! Deserves much wider distribution and critical acclaim.