Review

Greg likes sports. He played a lot growing up and, before we were overrun by children, he watched a lot on television. I, however, come from a long matriarchal line of sports-avoiders. I don’t watch and, if I did, I’d want every game to end in a tie so no one had to go home sad. It seems unlikely, then, that I should be the one welling up when Team Borg scored their triumphant goal in Britt-marie Was Here, but I was. Greg felt nothing, nada, diddly. Unfortunately, this says more about me than it does about the film. Clearly, I’m very easily manipulated, because Brittmarie didn’t really earn my tears at all.

It had all the right elements for a classic underdog film but none of them were sufficiently drawn out. It was just a bit thin. The titular character, who discovers early on that her husband of 30 years is having an affair, is boring. And, while the film opens promisingly with a quirky narration from Britt-marie summarising her life, which revolved around maintaining order in her Scandi-chic kitchen drawers, it fails to deliver the heartfelt, possibly funny, film it promises.

There’s a budding romance that comes out of nowhere and is based on nothing. There’s a lovely set-up for a story about two women who help each other overcome grief by coaching a kids’ football team together, but it’s unfulfilled. There’s a team of children who’ve apparently got nothing to live for except an upcoming football tournament but we learn nothing of their personalities, nor see them gain anything from Britt-marie, nor her anything from them, which would seem to be the primary goal of this genre.

When it was over, Greg attempted to re-write the film to be about Britt-marie and her husband’s mistress moving to Borg together and fighting for the job of football coach — literally wrestling for it — but ultimately falling in love. I told him it sounded like a porno. He agreed, but still thought it would’ve been better.

Prior to watching it, I repeatedly referred to this film as “How Stella Got Her Groove Back But With White People”, which is what I’d gleaned from the synopsis I’d half-listened to Greg reading aloud. Unfortunately, it was nothing like that film, but it did make this sports sceptic cry, so if you need a victory sob and you’re as easily manipulated as me, Britt-marie might just manage to squeeze a little happy moisture from your ducts.