Often when I am traveling I will sit in a hotel room and watch a film where I actually have no idea what they are saying. I don’t use subtitles as it allows me to look at the acting rather than the dialogue and it allows me to get inside the writer’s mind and see if I can understand the movie.
I cast my mind back to Stockholm 2011. I could not speak Swedish then, but I decided to go to the cinema. The movie that I was trying to watch was not available, so I decided to go and watch a Swedish movie called Apflickorna (She Monkeys).
It is a film about two young girls in Sweden who both partake in what I can only describe as Horse Gymnastics. One is already popular the other trying hard to break into the team. It follows the two girls lives and the adolescent rivalry, companionship and growing up together in rural Sweden.
At the time, it reminded me of another movie, though English, called ”The Last Great Picture Show. What did impress me was the acting of two actresses, Mathilda Paradeiser and Isabella Lindquist. Though Linda Molin acted superbly in one of the leads it was the sibling partnership of Isabella and Mathilda, playing Sara and Emma, that stole the show for me.
A year on I watched it again with a far better understanding of Swedish but somehow it seemed better when I could not understand. A raw film of young Swedish talent that makes me keen to follow both actresses’ careers.
I see Mathilda has a website, and I am sure that she will be a massive success in future films.
