Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tunenut (A) on February 20, 2018 at 12:40:23

Since "Body and Soul" is reviewed below, I thought I'd briefly discuss one of the other nominees in Foreign category.

This is a sprawling 2 1/2 hour movie centering around the busy life of the manager of a Stockholm modern art museum. The modern art aspect is of course a fat target for satire, and they make good use of it. One of the current exhibitions is a room with piles of dirt and this is funny enough just as a visual, but it goes a bit further with this. There is a long set piece where a bunch of older well-dressed museum patrons are "treated" to performance art by a shirtless muscleman who wanders around as an aggressive primitive animal, harassing the cultured crowd as his art.

Beyond the humorous art satire are a number of other plot lines. The manager has his cellphone and wallet stolen in a con game. He tracks his phone to a housing complex, but cannot know which apartment, so he has the harebrained idea to write threatening letters to everyone in the complex. This causes a bit of trouble. He has a brief fling with a character played by Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) and that leads to some awkwardness. There are some young millennials trying to create a viral buzz for the museum's new exhibit (a square patch of ground called the square) and they decide violence will attract the most attention. This does not go well.

In general, it's all a bit of an overstuffed mess, but with quite a few moments of entertainment and some big laughs. I was rolling with it for about 90 minutes, but started to lose interest in the last hour. IMHO, the points could have all been made with a tighter running time.

It's quite watchable. Not great, but pretty good all in all.