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Film Description
This coolly surreal film finds Andreas in a strange city, with no idea how or why he has arrived there. Nevertheless, things soon fall easily into place. Andreas is given a good job, an apartment, and he soon finds a wife. Everyone is happy, everyone is understanding, everyone greets each other with smiles in the morning. But something seems to be amiss beneath the veneer of this unblemished and ordered metropolis and Andreas is drawn to find out if there can't be a little more to life.
Everyone is happy in this city, everyone is understanding ('take lunch when you want', 'do you have too much work?'). Everyone smiles and greets each other in the morn... more >
Everyone is happy in this city, everyone is understanding ('take lunch when you want', 'do you have too much work?'). Everyone smiles and greets each other in the morning and everyone looks and dresses like a Norwegian architect, or a Norwegian architect's PA, or - in Andreas's case - a Norwegian architect's accountant. Over lunch, people peruse and discuss furniture catalogues. Andreas's girlfriend, who he meets at a tasteful dinner party, likes to talk about interior decoration; in fact it's all she talks about, ever. As for feelings, 'that would be nice' is about as far as it goes.
Andreas has no idea how or why he has fetched up in this strange, coolly grey city but he soon has the feeling, as do we, that he may well be in hell or something very like (it may well be heaven to some). Drawn by the sounds of what seems to be someone playing a saw in a basement, he attempts to find something a little more fulfilling in his life.
Coolly surreal, and with an unnerving veneer of niceness, this also has a couple of very surprising bloody moments and some sinister edges that recall in some small measure The Prisoner (and here I'm thinking of the grey-uniformed cleaning operatives and the little grey cleaning cart that patrols the streets). Appropriately for the title, this is a film that will bother you after you have seen it with questions of who, why, where and whether. And if too, for if this is utopia and where we are all heading, pack a shovel so you can at least try, like Andreas, to dig your way out. Odd and rather unsettling. < less
