LAFF 2008: Day 8

Roy Andersson’s You, the Living (Du Levande) 

Have you ever known someone you feel sorry for but can’t bear to spend more than a few minutes with? That describes the main character Eléonore (Eléonore Hendricks) in Josh Safdie’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed, a film I saw just before the festival began but am only now getting around to reviewing.

When we first meet her, the pixyish Eléonore is calling out to a woman across the street. She rattles off several names before finally hitting on the one that gets the woman’s attention. She crosses over to this stranger pretending that they know each other and the confused woman plays along, too embarrassed to admit she doesn’t remember. Then, after some idle chitchat and a hug, Eléonore walks off with the woman’s purse.

Eléonore is a kleptomaniac, but she doesn’t steal for material gain; she seems to thrive on the connection it provides to her victims. She’s a sad, lonely character and at first I felt for her, but eventually her selfishness simply becomes irritating. By the time she takes an extended road trip with a boy (played by the writer/director) in a stolen Volvo, I’ve stopped trying to understand her and I just want her to go away.

I hate to name drop Bresson more than once per film festival, but is Safdie going for some kind of riff on Pickpocket? I don’t know. The key for me to character portraits like this is some kind of hook or reference point I can ground myself with; some connection to the real world and I never found it. I felt neither ennobled nor enlightened nor entertained by the short journey I’d taken with Eléonore, but instead more than a little irritated at the time I’d spent with this indulgence.

On the other hand, there’s a strange fantasy sequence at the end involving a polar bear at the zoo that has stuck with me in the week or so since I saw the film. Something about Eléonore continues to haunt long after the end credits roll and I’m not prepared to dismiss it entirely.

On a side note, I should also add that seeing an indie filmed in glorious and grainy 16mm was a refreshing change from the video you see so often these days. Also, The Pleasure of Being Robbed was the only American film to play the Directors’ Fortnight at the most recent Cannes. (Narrative competition)

Next up was a refreshing cinematic change of pace from Sweden’s Roy Andersson. Perhaps because it begins with a man relaying a dream he’s just had about bombers, but You, the Living (Du Levande) put me in the mind of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. More likely though, I think it was the apocalyptic pall hanging over the surreal, dreamlike landscape that bears witness to the fractured vignettes of a group of drab, unconnected citizens of a nameless urban hell. If it’s not hell, it’s a purgatory as the pallid characters seem to be awaiting their doom. I couldn’t help but think the title referred to those of us in the audience.

I never saw Andersson’s previous film Songs From the Second Floor so I didn’t know what to expect from You, the Living. Whatever it was, it delivered something else altogether. Moving from one unrelated character to the next, it’s a mosaic made up of fragments of people’s lives. Some characters appear in more than one vignette and some characters reappear in the backgrounds of others. Each one is a tiny, deadpan sliver of surreality that lodges under your skin and more often than not makes you shake your head and laugh.

Each moment seems captured in the same light of early morning or early evening and the only sense that time is passing comes whenever last call is announced at the local bar. In between these last calls, people lament their sad lives. Sometimes a character stops and speaks to the camera, telling of a dream they had or relating an anecdote of misery. It would all be depressing if it wasn’t so bizarrely funny.

Did I mention that much of it is set to the strains of either a Dixieland jazz band or a marching band? It’s just another layer of strangeness.

I’m not sure what to make of You, the Living or how to explain why I found it so oddly satisfying, but there you have it. (International Showcase)

Filed under: Film Festivals

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