Den allvarsamma leken by Hjalmar Söderberg

He does pack Dagmar and Anne Marie off for a summer holiday, accompanying Lydia back to her childhood island home for some frisky time in the sun. Lydia then becomes more aggressive about securing her happiness with Arvid, but he remains committed to his family. While he attempts to resist, she seduces him the next day at her hotel. There’s an inadequate sense of the passing of time, but it appears to be about a decade later when Lydia and Arvid meet by chance with their spouses - at a performance of that slut show Carmen, significantly. But while she goes through the motions, the character’s arc never acquires much thematic heft, beyond being a victim of her poor choices, as is the frustratingly passive Arvid with his. This seems to be intended to underscore both the restraints of Swedish society at the time and the ignition flame within Lydia as she attempts to steer her own destiny, often heedless of the consequences. Scherfig drops in mentions of social upheaval as women campaign for the vote. The respective offspring of Lydia and Arvid are named Marianne and Anne Marie, suggesting the mirror images of their situations. Arvid also marries for money, chosen by rather than choosing the pretty and pleasant Dagmar (Liv Mjones, excellent) he produces a daughter of his own. Instead she marries a wealthy older man, Roslin (Sven Nordin), and has a daughter. I am nothing,” he says, suggesting clandestine trysts, which she refuses. But Arvid, now promoted to theater and opera critic, hesitates when he has the opportunity to marry her, because of ambition or or poverty or pride or other factors not really explained by the movie. She gets away when her father dies, just not far, since he left her penniless. (That tinkling piano motif is heard to death throughout the movie.) Lydia gives him one of her watercolors on the back are written the words: “Away. A few meaningful glances, some soft-spoken words and a brush of fingers at the piano are all it takes to seal their love. He meets Lydia Stille (Karin Franz Korlof) and her severe eyebrows for the first time when his editor-in-chief, Markel (Michael Nyqvist), takes him along to interview her father Anders (Goran Ragnerstam), a boozing painter, at their ramshackle cabin on an island in the Stockholm archipelago. But neither of them has quite the charisma needed to command the screen and hold us captive in their world.Īrvid Stjarnblom ( Sverrir Gudnason) is a new proofreader at a Stockholm newspaper as the story begins. The leads are perfectly capable, and they don’t hold back in conveying the raw feeling of two people eternally conflicted over their choices. Part of the issue is casting, particularly in a movie in which the somewhat artless visual style suggests that emotive performance is the director’s main concern.

Den allvarsamma leken by Hjalmar Söderberg