European Films

A devout practitioner of the last egalitarian sport on earth (that would be ping pong) tries to get by with the help of his younger brother in Jens Jonsson’s Ping-pongkingen (King of Ping Pong), a pleasant if not entirely successful addition to the Scandinavian tragicomedy genre. The quietly quirky characters and semi-bleak, seriocomic tone remind of Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson, but Ping-pongkingen -- Jonsson’s feature debut after a long career in shorts and commercials -- lacks an overall cohesiveness that makes the slightly askew worlds of Kaurismäki and Andersson come alive. Nevertheless, Jonsson is clearly a talent to watch, and the chemistry between the actors adds a nice warm glow to the otherwise wintry landscapes. The film is part of the Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

16-year-old Rille (Jerry Johansson) and 13-year-old Erik (Hampus Johansson) are polar opposites. Rille is rotund (though still not as zaftig as their mother), has black hair and is the self-appointed king of ping pong, while Erik is lanky, blond and generally more like their athletic if generally drunk and absent father.  Despite their age-difference, the two brothers generally get along, often trying to beat one another at the table game of the title (Rille always wins, but Erik is still eager to play again).

Until some dramatic turns very late into the proceedings, the film generally coasts on its nicely captured fraternal camaraderie and dryly comic observations of family life in small-town Sweden in winter, though Jonsson and co-screenwriter Hans Gunnarsson (Ondskan / Evil) never fully succeed in making the various tics and oddities feel part of a world that could exist beyond the picture plane. The interiors, with their faded pastels and hazy white light, might look like an abandoned set from a Roy Andersson film, with the numerous cats lounging about adding a nice quirky touch, but it never convinces as anything else beyond a quirky movie’s invention.

 

The slightly askew and mildly humorous tone of Ping-pongkingen is abandoned in the latter part of the film, which seems out of synch with the rest of the material even as it provides the story with a much-needed jolt of energy. It is largely thanks to the likeability of the actors that the two almost separate entities still work as well together as they do, with especially Hampus Johansson as Erik and Ann-Sofie Nurmi as their mother giving nicely modulated performances that eschew easy clichés.

 

Technically, the film is a class act. The often ominous, old school score by Martin Willert is a nice touch, while the gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Askild Edvardsen is simply magnificent. Editing by Kristofer Nordin could have been tighter, especially in the film's first hour. The opening scene set on a bus, however, is a classical example of foreshadowing that works on both the comedic and dramatic levels.

 

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