12/03/2013 - Good Luck. And Take Care of Each Other is Jens Sjögren’s debut, running in competition at the festival

In competition at the Bergamo Film Meeting, the dramatic comedy Good Luck. And Take Care of Each Other [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Swede Jens  Sjögren, a film you may feel like you have already seen. The main characters are Alvar, an old retiree who secretly builds mini scenes from cities he has visited or would like to have visited, and Miriam, a young woman who dreams of becoming a writer for children and of moving to Sweden to be with her grandmother.

The two randomly meet and begin a friendship. Alvar (Bengt C.W. Carlsson, Millennium – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) finds his love for life again and lets himself be carried away into an adventure by his young companion (Claudia Neij), who is introverted and impertinent. They set about leaving wooden statues of Alvar’s deceased wife around the city, with the aim of inspiring people. This is immediately reminiscent of the father in Amélie [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2001), who started receiving postcards with photos of his mysteriously disappeared garden gnome from cities around the world.

More generally, you are brought to think of certain directors who enjoy telling the stories of inter-generational friendships - often to great effect.  From Harold and Maude to Leon and Lost in Translation, to another recent Swedish film, A One-Way to Antibes [+see also:
trailer
film profile] directed by Richard Hobert, in which the main character Sven-Bertil Taube gave Bengt C.W. Carlsson the award for best actor at the Guldbagge Awards in January 2013.

All in all, Good Luck’s screenplay is far from original. And this despite the fact that its director is no conformist: author of brilliant music videos and off-beat advertising campaigns, Jens Sjögren has had various minor roles in Swedish films, and is the frontman for a Swedish punk band called ‘Bring me The Fucking Riot... Man’. In this, his feature film directing debut, Jens tries to play the sentimental card. Protagonist Miriam, a rebellious teenager, daughter of irresponsible, nagging parents, verging on stereotypical, is not eccentric enough to sustain our attention and the director offers no other visual distraction. The introduction of a very delicate theme of cancer does nothing to help things out.

The intimate theme of the film actually turns out to be writing. Miriam wants to express her love for life through children’s stories, and the scene in which she reads one through the megaphone of a factory is beautiful. The writing of the actual film must have been an obsession for the director, who admits to having worked on Good Luck. And Take Care of Each Other for three years, having had “different opinions” with editor Henning Mark and having worked nonstop to “get to a point where everyone would be happy.”  

(Translated from Italian)