Sebbe

I think it's a beautiful and realistic film about the pain of growing up and being the outcast in the school. Feeling ashamed of your family situation.

What was really good about it was that how the bullying and events in school happened felt real. I could relate to it strongly and recognize those events from my school years.

It was how it happens in Europe at least. If you compare the way the bullying is done in a normal Hollywood studio film, this felt more real.

The other real strength in this film is the acting. It is directed superbly and also the role of the mother is a very good one. Her character is strongly written.

Then we come to the weakness of the film, why I almost left the theater. The film doesn't have a drive and it doesn't variate. Basically it's the same scenes happening again and again. It was an 80 minute film, which could have been 70 minutes. Or at least some re-writing would have helped a bit.

But whit it's weakness, it was still a very good film.

Generally,the movie about teenagers deals with the boy/girl who's got everything to be happy but feels melancholic and finds it hard to come to terms with his/her childhood's end ;harmless teenage angst .

Sebbe is diametrically opposite to them :he's got nothing ,and I mean nothing to be happy : his immature mother did not want him and is emotionally instable , sometimes so resentful she can kick him out of their apartment ; not being able to afford birthday presents ,she urges her son to give back a neighbor's gift ("I could not buy anything to her son") , and sometimes feeling so guilt she steals one jacked which belongs to one of his schoolmates.

School is another hell for Sebbe ;he is not fond of sports ,and that 's the coup de grace ; a preposterous cliché depicted in Anderson's play (transferred to the screen by Minnelli)"tea and sympathy "(1956)would claim that a boy who is not good at sports is a sissy ,a suspect ,a gay ,an intolerance which takes stupidity to new limits ; but in the locker-room ,you become the "true manly "boys' punching-bag .Besides ,Sebbe's father is dead (or he walked out on his mother),and he has absolutely no male figure at home .The only teacher who shows some compassion is a woman and she can't really relate to the boy's predicament .

There's a tendency to dwell on the sordid side of life, but teenagers can be cruel to their fellows ; Sebastian's face reflects an intense longing for love :the actor remains restrained ,sheds no tears , but one feels his despair,his awful solitude :what does the future has in store for such a born-loser?

A very well crafted movie about a significant period in a young person's life.

Swedish drama doesn't seem to include stereotypes. Rather it portrays people, social environments, and relationships or interactions with luminous wisdom.

I found every scene, every frame, every nuance of acting and visual imagery engaging.

Sebbe is a very sad, moving story of a teenage boy who is essentially alone and abandoned by everyone around him. His father is gone. His mother is emotionally unbalanced and behaves erratically. He is bullied and humiliated at school. And he's left to deal with it all on his own.

It's difficult to describe too much of what actually happens without spoiling the storyline. One example from the many depicted … his mother can't get him a birthday gift, but she finds a winter jacket in the laundry room and steals it. She presents it to Sebbe as a gift. He wears it to school where one of the other students, one who has been relentlessly bullying him, recognizes it as his own and accuses Sebbe of being a thief. His mother allows Sebbe to take the blame for what she did. He forgives her, tells her to forget about it and her response is to tell him she never wanted him and hates him. She kicks him out of the home and even that small, inadequate sense of refuge in his hostile environment is lost to him.

The acting is exceptionally good, especially by the young man playing Sebbe. Often there is minimal dialogue, but he projects his despair, hopelessness and the sense of total abandonment painfully well. It would be nice to think that such abuse and cruelty would not exist especially in a country like Sweden, which seems to be so protective and caring for its citizens … but unfortunately we all know that too many children suffer from such callous, truly inhuman behavior even in the so-called "advanced" countries.

A very sad, depressing story that was written, produced and acted extremely well.

I did not expect much when starting to watch, but I almost immediately got caught by this extremely moving, sad sad story. I do not understand that this film has not been watched in Sweden, although an explanation might be that it describes ordinary lives of in a very realistic, uncompromising way which is not always easy to watch. It is so inspiring to discover a little diamond between all the garbage we are being served! It's a 'must watch'