Slim Susie

I don't know where to start. Acting? Dialogue? Characters? Great dead-pan acting. Excellent fast-and-funny-as-hell dialogue. Superb misfit-crazy-characters. This film's got it all. That it's spoken in the Swedish accent of Värmländska just makes a great film even better. In fact, don't waste your time reading this. Go down to your local rental and get it. Pronto!

Hint: you might like this movie a lot better if you're something of a movie buff. Tons of reference humor. The good sort. ;-)

One of very few Swedish comedies that I really enjoyed. Instead of (like most Swedish comedies) putting someone through purely embarrassing moments and believing that everyone finds that funny, this movie relies on surprising twists and turns and a witty funny dialogue. In addition a mystery is resolved. Erik returns home when he finds out that his sister Sussie is missing. In his search for her more and more childhood friends get involved in this story. As we get to see the end first, the story then jumps back and forth in time to slowly resolve the plot. This enables the movie to take very surprising and funny twists.

As mentioned, a great dialogue, extra credit to whoever wrote that and to whoever created the different characters. Good acting, funny plot. Doesn't get very much better.

8/10

Alienation from close people, frequent search for something big and different, worship of money, and downgrade of townships are common issues in everyday life in the Western world. Slim Susie shows those and similar topics via "fun-house mirror" and odd personalities capable of commit felonies, if necessary. Village and small town types are often funny for outsiders as their world of thinking is totally different plus they often stick to their "pleasant" past. The director and co-writer Ulf Malmros has depicted the phenomena in a skillful manner, and his selection of character actors (e.g. Tuva Novotny, Lotta Tejle, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Dahlman) provides the film with additional value. Perhaps the course of action is not always smooth and some scenes seem arid, but the overall script is wittily constructed - with some patterns from independent British and US films.

The film is definitely for you if you like crazy crime comedies with stylish types and background.

This film has a nervous energy that springs from the opening moment and doesn't stop until somewhere in the last third. Dazzling narrative technique, nearly always confusing you at the start of a scene, but somehow moving the story forward at the same time. The characters in the small village are wonderfully flexible - it's almost as if they change as the film's frenetic comedy and absurd plot demand. There is a sombre undertone as well, and it's that that makes some of the moments of resolution in the film somewhat awkward, as if the seriousness were being shoehorned into a farce. This will either infuriate or drive you into gales of exhausting laughter.

There have for the last decade been quite a lot of Swedish films about the Swedish world outside Stockholm. The stockholmers have had a lot to laugh about. Little is known here about how the smalltown Swedish inhabitants take that.

But "Smala Sussie" ("Slim Sussie" in English) is funny in more ways than being a hillbilly comedy. The acting by young Björn Starrin, Jonas Rimeika and Tuva Novotny is great. There might be a place for a discussion whether murder and using drugs really is a funny subject. Here it is so however, although everything is far from the Tarantino treatment.

But you have to be Swedish to appreciate this. Or maybe Scandinavian.