Involuntary

Linnea and Sara

This 2008 Swedish film has been described as ‘a tragic comedy’ Involuntary interweaves five otherwise unconnected stories. Two teenage girls, Linnea and Sara, take sexy pictures of each other in provocative poses, and get increasingly drunk. An heterosexual group of male friends experiment with gay sex. A righteous teacher tries to resolve the problem of a colleague physically chastising a pupil, but is not quite sure what to do. A bus driver refuses to continue with the journey until someone confesses to breaking the curtain rail in the toilet. At a middle class family party the 60 year-old host is seriously injured in a firework accident but insists on remaining the life and soul of the party. The common thread between these stories seems to be human group behaviour that in turn is a reflection of modern Swedish society. There is no real resolution to each story except perhaps in the lecture that Linnea gets from her mother.

Who broke my curtain rail?

Writer and director Ruben Ostlund has been compared to Michael Haneke and has intimated in various interviews that he was not interested in the conventional Hollywood narrative instead he wanted to pick on the energy of the short YouTube films that only have to retain peoples attention for a minimal time span. With unconventional camera work which includes fixed, or barely moving camera positions, not always showing all the characters in the scene, shots from the knees down, characters listening to some one whom we can not see and fading to black at the end of each scene, its not always an easy film to watch and will divide viewers, some people will find this film extremely interesting and others will be completely turned off. Me? I found it a different, but fascinating watch, give it a try.