Ove will satisfy your cravings if you’ve got a Swede tooth
There is a man called Ove at the centre of A Man Called Ove, a Swedish film (and a nominee for the best foreign-language Oscar), based on the 2012 novel by Fredrik Backman. Ove (Rolf Lassgård), is a grumpy 59-year-old, recently laid off from his railway job, surly to shopkeepers, brusque with his neighbours, and unforgiving of anyone who doesn’t follow the rules in the tidy townhouse community where he lives. And he thinks eating lunch amounts to a moral weakness.
But Ove also dislikes clowns and sloppy use of language, so he can’t be all bad. In fact, the not-all-bad aspects of Ove’s grey soul are the first sign of trouble for this well-meaning crowd-pleaser. It’s as though director Hannes Holm, who also adapted the book, worries that if we really start to dislike the title character we’ll never change our minds.
So in the very early going we learn that the flowers he’s been haggling over in the store are for the grave of his wife, Sonja. We see his kindly father in flashback, and discover that the old man died in an ironic tragedy that arrives with the precision and timing of a Swedish train.
Film logic (see Up, Gran Torino, The Visitor, etc.), demands that the gruff codger be thrown together with a young, vivacious, preferably foreign newcomer who will help him break out of his shell. Enter new neighbour Patrick (Tobias Almborg), with his Iranian wife, Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), and two adorable moppets. She, like Ove, is a bit of a pedant, which is enough for him to begin to open up to her.
Memories and conversations lead to flashbacks that show a young and less stodgy Ove (now played by Filip Berg), meeting his wife-to-be (Ida Engvoll), and proving much more accommodating of her than of the rest of humanity. When they move in together and discover that she has more books than he does shelves, his reply is immediate and non-grudging: “I’ll build another one.” Ditto the crib they learn they’ll soon need, setting up yet another inevitable tragedy.
Ove spends much of the movie trying to kill himself by various means, but he keeps getting distracted by the good deeds he performs almost without thinking — he teaches Parvaneh to drive, babysits her kids, mends a bike for a neighbourhood kid — oh, and he saves someone from being hit by a train. The guy’s a regular George Bailey.
The film is as sweet as a sugar cookie, and about as surprising; the opening subtitles might as well say: “Sugar cookies. Ingredient: Sugar. Also: may contain one nut, named Ove.”