[Be pleased then, you the living]

SIFF Cinema is back! I am full of glee! I dug out my volunteer vouchers and caught the last screening of You, the Living on Thursday night, and am so glad I did. Just marvelous, and definitely one of my favorite movies of the year. (Nevermind that it actually came out in 2007. Compared to the majority of stuff I’ve seen this year that’s practically brand new.)

It’s a Swedish black comedy, a series of vignettes that makes use of drab sets, dryly absurd humor, and repeated lines to comment on the human condition. Which makes it sound dour, but it’s not. To borrow Ebert’s term, it’s elevating. Things go wrong for everyone. Let’s have a drink and see how tomorrow goes.

The entire film is shot on soundstages, and it put me in mind of Synecdoche, New York (which I loved). It’s more accessible than Synecdoche, which is counter intuitive what with it being vignettes rather than more-or-less narrative, but there you have it.

I haven’t seen any of the director’s other work — this is only his fourth feature film as he apparently works about as quickly as Terrence Malick — but like Malick, I suspect they’re all very much worth watching.