The plot of this film is very simple, and not because it's difficult to explain but because very little happens: A young boy in a drab suburb of Oslo, Sweden is bothered by bullies. He meets a mysterious young girl who turns out to be a vampire. The girl has to kill people to drink their blood. They become friends, but she is a vampire so its a little strange.
A few people die (actually, it is rather bloody), and there are lots of disturbing close ups of the girls white white face with blood on it, but mostly it is about the young boy, Oskar, who is confused and lost and whose face is relatively emotionless but seems to hide a lot of pain. I had read rave reviews about this film, and though I liked it and appreciated it as a worthy addition to the field of vampire film, I don't think I'd want to watch it again. It was very slow, very creepy at times (and I'm not sure if I think it was for the right reasons or at the right times), and just unlikable.
The part that bothered me the most was the unreality of their lives. I feel like this is hard to explain because 'unreality' can mean so many things. I don't mean it was too fantasy like (like a Terry Gilliam film, which doesn't even pretend to be realistic), or that it was 'hyper real' (like say "There Will Be Blood", "The Puffy Chair" or Herzog's stuff at times, where a film wants to siphon off excess parts of life to focus very intensely on something specific). This film was unreal because I didn't understand anyone's motivations or didn't believe them, and I'm pretty sure I was supposed to. I have no idea why Oskar was so upset, it seems like they left a lot of things confusing. One scene at his dad's house was just weird- his dad's friend comes over, interrupt a board game and they sit around and talk w/ Oskar. They didn't abandon Oskar, they were engaging him, but it seemed like the film was trying to say there was something horribly wrong with this or there was something they weren't telling us.
I realize some of this feeling might have come from the fact that it is a Swedish film and I know nothing about life in a Swedish suburb. Yeah, ok, but I never feel confused watching a Bergman film. Their lives just felt weird.
Hey, but maybe that's what they were going for. Maybe they wanted me to feel slightly uncomfortable with the reality in the film. If so, they succeeded. I don't want to blast the film, because it was well made, beautifully filmed, and had a satisfying ending. But I can't help but feel a little lost and unable to connect with anything that happened in it.
Oh dude I loved this movie. I think it's unfortunate you couldn't connect with it. Yes I think the idea definitely was to make you feel uncomfortable. I got the sense that I was suppose to question the motivations of the characters, just as I find myself doing often times with people I meet in life. It's kind of like when I find myself thinking, why the hell did the person do that, what's wrong with them? That was the same sense I got from the movie which I thought was very realistic. As far as the scene with the dad and his friend goes. His friend comes over and they immediately begin to drink. There are close up shots of the two of them pouring alcohol which leads me to believe that the father has some sort of problem with this and Oskar is uncomfortable with the fact that he begun to drink rather than continuing to play with him. His friend also gave off that kind of creepy sleezebag feel that lead me to believe that he was really his fathers drug contact, or something similar, but they never actually showed anything like that so I could have totally just made that up. I also think Oskar was so upset all the time because he was basically having the shit kicked out of him by life and he didn't know how to deal with it. He had no way of expressing anything that he felt about it. But anyway, I've rambled for way too long about this movie now. Byebye :)
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