Having been enthralled by director Roy Andersson’s most recent films I’m surprised it has taken me this long to explore his earlier movies. A Swedish Love Story, titled as such for an international market so as not to be confused with Love Story also released in the same year, was Andersson’s debut feature film and is far more conventional and less absurdist than his later work. It focuses on the tentative romance between two teens during one perpetually sunny summer in Sweden.

It is refreshing to see actors who actually look the age of the characters they are supposed to be portraying. Normally teenagers in such films are played by actors with model good looks and five o’clock shadows yet…

Teenage romances have been a common subject for independent films in the last decade, but I watched hardly any as they didn't appeal to me. I'm now glad of that as it made A Swedish Love Story - a film which has been on rental lists and wishlists of mine for a few years - seem all the more refreshing and beautiful.

This, Roy Andersson's first feature, is a simple story better watched than written about. (And whose essence of endless summer has been bottled more effectively by other reviewers on this site.) It is both exquisitely ideal and realist: young teenage lovers managing to find one another among loitering friends and complicated adults, sneaking away into their idyll whenever…

So that's what summer looks like. This is a tender story of teenage love set against the hazy glow of a glorious summer, and is an early film by Sweden's own Terrence Malick, Roy Andersson.
Long and languid, and beautifully shot in an almost vérité style, the film captures the first painfully awkward moments when two young teens first circle each other, then make tentative overtures in making a connection.

It's very sweet and naturalistic and real, but, this being Scandinavia, there's a Nordic melancholia on the horizon in the form of adulthood - all of the parents, aunts, in-laws and so on, are all suffering varying forms of unhappiness and quiet - or not so quiet - despair.
There's…

A Swedish Love Story is Roy Andersson’s first film and captures the beauty, simplicity and any other cliches you can dredge up about young love. The story doesn’t build, though. Per and Annika, the two young love birds fall hard and fast for each other and are hard to separate after it starts. He never tells you why they like each other that much, but you have to figure that his sweet motorscooter and her short skirts and fetch smoking habit don’t hurt the cause.

What this movie is lauded for appropriately is the cynicism of the adults depicted in the film and how their depressing outlooks on life influence the kids. With that as the backdrop for their lives,…

A Swedish Love Story is Roy Andersson’s first film and captures the beauty, simplicity and any other cliches you can dredge up about young love. The story doesn’t build, though. Per and Annika, the two young love birds fall hard and fast for each other and are hard to separate after it starts. He never tells you why they like each other that much, but you have to figure that his sweet motorscooter and her short skirts and fetch smoking habit don’t hurt the cause.

What this movie is lauded for appropriately is the cynicism of the adults depicted in the film and how their depressing outlooks on life influence the kids. With that as the backdrop for their lives,…

Teenage romances have been a common subject for independent films in the last decade, but I watched hardly any as they didn't appeal to me. I'm now glad of that as it made A Swedish Love Story - a film which has been on rental lists and wishlists of mine for a few years - seem all the more refreshing and beautiful.

This, Roy Andersson's first feature, is a simple story better watched than written about. (And whose essence of endless summer has been bottled more effectively by other reviewers on this site.) It is both exquisitely ideal and realist: young teenage lovers managing to find one another among loitering friends and complicated adults, sneaking away into their idyll whenever…

Having been enthralled by director Roy Andersson’s most recent films I’m surprised it has taken me this long to explore his earlier movies. A Swedish Love Story, titled as such for an international market so as not to be confused with Love Story also released in the same year, was Andersson’s debut feature film and is far more conventional and less absurdist than his later work. It focuses on the tentative romance between two teens during one perpetually sunny summer in Sweden.

It is refreshing to see actors who actually look the age of the characters they are supposed to be portraying. Normally teenagers in such films are played by actors with model good looks and five o’clock shadows yet…

So that's what summer looks like. This is a tender story of teenage love set against the hazy glow of a glorious summer, and is an early film by Sweden's own Terrence Malick, Roy Andersson.
Long and languid, and beautifully shot in an almost vérité style, the film captures the first painfully awkward moments when two young teens first circle each other, then make tentative overtures in making a connection.

It's very sweet and naturalistic and real, but, this being Scandinavia, there's a Nordic melancholia on the horizon in the form of adulthood - all of the parents, aunts, in-laws and so on, are all suffering varying forms of unhappiness and quiet - or not so quiet - despair.
There's…

No, it's not some Scandinavian hanky-panky nor a documentary about IKEA but a masterful study of young love that's inspired by the classics of the Czechoslovakian New Wave. Roy Andersson's directorial debut features Pär, who initially looks like he's being taking styling tips from The Wild Ones, and Annika, who has an oddly hypnotic visage. There relationship is light on dialogue, focusing on the slightest touch, the titillating glances - there is little doubt that there love is true (at this point in time at least) unlike that of Annika's parents. Her father is angry at the world, believing that he has wasted the past 45 years of his life going down an unfulfilling path and that it is now…