I first saw Sytten in Denmark when I was about 19. Being the right age and in the right place, I LOVED it. It captured the Denmark I had come to love better than any other Danish film. Back in the States at age 23, the film turned up in my college-town theater, so I took my fiancé in order to "share some of my Danish experience." What I thought was a fun, boyish romp, was for her, the dirtiest thing she had ever seen. Now that my own sons are past that age, I'd love to see it again to see how it plays in my memory. I particularly remember the funniest scene with the lad struggling with masturbation and the local priest trying to, literally, help him out with it, "So we can repent together later." Then, after his own awkward experience with one of the farm girls, entering the farm house and seeing the maid on her knees scrubbing the floor. She had been coming on to him even though she was old enough to be his mother, but now with some experience under his belt, he quietly sneaked up behind her and gave her the thrill of her life. The older woman/young boy is a recurring theme in the Danish coming of age novels I've read, and this supposed autobiographical portrait of the writer fit right in.
