As gently off kilter as his earlier "Show Me Love," Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's "Together" is a comedy of manners set in the hippie heyday of 1975.
Taking its name from the moniker adopted by an overcrowded group house in Stockholm, "Together" casts a wry and skeptical eye on such trappings of the era as "open" relationships, political lesbianism, the humorlessness of doctrinaire radicalism and the merits of vegetarian cuisine.
Ola Norell and Shanti Roney in "Together."
(IFC Films)
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When hapless Goran's (Gustaf Hammarsten) middle-class sister Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren) leaves her alcoholic husband (Michael Nyqvist) to move in with his freewheeling housemates, pre-existing tensions bubble over. Who will do the dishes? Will Goran mind when girlfriend Lena (Anja Lundqvist) sleeps with Erik (Olle Sarri)? And is underarm hair a feminist statement?
Moodysson's unforced evocation of the period is spot on, with the commune boasting a beat-up van with a flower-power paint job, two toddlers named Tet and Moon, and an impromptu party breaking out upon the group's hearing a radio announcement that Franco is dead.
But what the filmmaker is best at is depicting the universality of relationships, including the chaste but well-drawn friendship between Elisabeth's awkward preteen daughter (Emma Samuelsson) and the shy boy next door (Henrik Lundstrom).
Moodysson's cornball sentimentality about the many shapes of the human family is tempered by his honesty about personal frailty and the silliness of utopian living experiments. In Swedish with subtitles.
TOGETHER (R, 106 minutes) – Contains nudity, profanity and sexual situations.
At Visions Cinema/Bistro/Lounge
