European Films

A group of Swedish youngsters says goodbye to the happy melancholy of youth in Jesper Ganslandt’s effective mood piece Farväl Falkenberg (Falkenberg Farewell). The atmospheric portrait of the kids living in the titular Swedish coastal town emerged from a mountain of material inspired by the real lives of the film’s protagonists, initially shot on digital video without any financing or producer attached. The result is a freewheeling dive into the hermetically sealed world of all-male friendships that, though the film’s storytelling technique is quite impressionistic by way of Gus Van Sant, feels natural and true. Viewers paying attention to the film’s formal and structural aspects (and those familiar with one Van Sant in particular) will see a certain late plot development coming, which upsets yet confirms the status quo that preceded it. Though the film’s closing moments are not as resonant as the earlier scenes and the characters are not likely to linger in the mind as singular individuals, the film certainly works on an artistic level.

“Memories are deceitful,” announces the opening voice-over that is apparently read from a diary of one of the boys, before explaining that we are now “going back to them here”. The protagonists of these memories are Jesper (played by the 28-year-old director), David (David Jonnson), Jörgen (Jörgen Svensson) and the brothers John and Holger (John and Holger Eriksson). They are spending their last summer in their native Falkenberg, in that no man’s land between adolescence and adulthood. Like in the recent Spanish independent comedy Aislados (Isolated), the boys mainly enjoy hanging out with each other during summer, though besides talking, in Falkenberg they also swim, ride horses (or try to), go on small burglary sprees, push down dead trees and practice shooting. The boys are often paired in twos for their non-adventures, with discussion topics ranging from the coming of the antichrist (“In three weeks”) to the coming of the Messiah (“Two-and-a-half months”).  

Of sex, drugs and rock and roll (the holy trinity of Occidental Youth’s favourite discussion topics) the subject of sex and girls is conspicuously absent here. This does not mean that the film is not sensual however, as the camera lingers on the lank bodies of the lads in various states of summery undress (and total nudity for swimming). What is to be made of this is left for the viewer to decide (Van Sant’s films have been less ambiguous in this respect), though it is a perfectly acceptable option that the boys are just friends and comfortable around each other whether dressed or not. 

The film features the type of shaky digital camera aesthetic that must be a major part of the curriculum of Scandinavian film schools now (though Ganslandt did not study film, as the press kit explicitely notes). The film’s structural collage-and-vignette approach works surprisingly well and contributes to its idea of memories as a subjective sensory repository that is often more about the how than about the why. Falkenberg looses steam towards the end however, abandoning its snappy editing that suggested furtive glances for prolonged takes that allow for more scrutiny than the story can bear. Actors playing versions of their own personas are in top form.