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Film: Involuntary
Release date: 28th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Ruben Östlund
Starring: Villmar Björkman, Linnea Cart-Lamy, Leif Edlund, Sara Eriksson, Lola Ewerlund
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Trinity
Format: DVD
Country: Sweden
Sweden's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Academy Awards, and an award winner at various international film festivals, Involuntary tells five parallel stories that take place in and around the suburbs of Gothenburg. Intercutting between the five different stories, director Ruben Ostlund takes an unflinching, unsentimental look at how group dynamics impact on human behaviour.
Involuntary begins as it ends, with the view from the front of a vehicle driving through city streets at night. Only at the end of the film do we realise that the view is from an ambulance transporting a man to hospital. The man is Villmar, a grandfather who earlier in the evening refused professional medical attention after he was injured by a firework that exploded in his face at a birthday party.
Very different to the stoic Villmar are Linnea and Sara, two giggly teenage girls who take pictures of themselves posing together as models and get drunk with their friends, leading to Linnea passing out and being abandoned by the side of a road. Alcohol is also an important ingredient in the story of a group of thirty-something men holidaying in the country, one of whom is sexually assaulted in a prank gone too far.
In contrast, the mood is as sober as it is sombre in the story of a teacher who feels she is being ostracised by her peers after she accuses an older male colleague of abusing a pupil, and in the tale of a middle-aged actress on a coach trip who lets a young boy take the blame after she accidentally breaks a curtain rod in the on-board toilet…
The individual stories may, on the surface, sound as though they’re lacking in dramatic tension, but the way Ostlund weaves them together gives Involuntary an intriguing, surprisingly absorbing quality. Not a lot happens, but it happens in such a way that issues of group identity and behaviour are slyly, fascinatingly dissected.
Comparisons have been made to Michael Haneke, but while Ostlund shares something of Haneke’s detached, unsentimental approach, his narratives are, for better or worse, clearer cut and more obviously resolved. The Swede has also injected Involuntary with a streak of deadpan humour that adds a touch of warmth where Haneke would probably opt for an icier, more solemn feel.
The humour in Involuntary is hardly laugh-out-loud funny, but it does raise the odd knowing smile, and serves the film’s overall theme well. The discomfort of the teacher who feels that that her colleagues are marginalising her is contrasted against her earlier attempts to teach a group of pre-schoolers that submitting to peer pressure is wrong, and on the coach trip the solitary actress has to cope with a talkative fan who pesters her incessantly.
There is also a certain wry humour in the way that Ostlund deliberately sets out to tell five separate stories that do not converge or intersect at any point. If Involuntary was a Hollywood film, the five separate stories would most likely overlap at some point, but the only link in Ostlund’s film is the way the characters in each of the five stories are affected by the groups they are a part of.
Some viewers will enjoy this approach, while others may just find it alienating. Similarly, Ostlund’s use of long takes and unusual camera angles and positions will not be to everybody’s taste. Individual scenes were apparently painstakingly rehearsed and then shot uninterrupted, with Ostlund filming as many as twenty takes of each scene before achieving what he was looking for. Maria Lundqvist is the only well known actor in the film, but the entire cast deliver exceptional, highly naturalistic performances.
The results often feel more like a documentary than a work of fiction, but Ostlund counters this by placing his camera in unusual positions: at one point at floor level so that we see only the lower limbs and feet of the characters, and in another scene facing a car door so that we watch the reflections of men talking. Ostlund also allows the camera to film when there is very little movement, and, at times, his visual approach seems closer to contemporary art photography than filmmaking.
The overall effect is a highly distinctive film that some viewers will find poignant and quietly entrancing for the same reasons that others will find it obtuse and uneventful. Like a William Eggleston photograph, Involuntary has a low-key, quotidian charm that is refreshingly lacking in melodrama and hyperbole.
Involuntary offers an absorbing and insightful look at how different individuals abandon free will in the face of peer pressure, and is filmed in such a way as to encourage viewers to use their own free will and imagination to interpret events that unfold. JG
Film: Involuntary
Release date: 29th October 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Ruben Östlund
Starring: Villmar Björkman, Linnea Cart-Lamy, Leif Edlund, Sara Eriksson, Lola Ewerlund
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Trinity
Format: Cinema
Country: Sweden
Sweden’s entry for the 2010 Academy Awards, and a multi-award winner/festival favourite besides, Ruben Ostlund’s Involuntary takes familiar situations from everyday life to look at how a group dynamic can influence the choice and actions of an individual.
The film sees us following five unrelated stories intermittently.
An accident with a firework upsets the celebrations at a birthday party, with the injured, elderly host unwilling to attend hospital or receive medical examination, fearing he will upset the shindig for the attendees.
A bus trip goes off track when the driver refuses to continue the journey after discovering the curtain rail in the vehicle’s toilet has been damaged, and nobody is willing to take responsibility – although he suspects the group of foul-mouthed teenagers who have been fooling around at the back.
Two young girls, who love to pose together for sexy photos on their web cam, get wasted with their friends. However, one of them is left lying unconscious and alone when the group scarper having been confronted by a motorist whose car has been damaged by their immature antics.
A virtuous school teacher takes umbrage with the teaching methods and attitudes of her fellow educators, and takes her complaints against one even further after he physically reprimands a pupil.
A drunken all-male reunion takes an uncomfortable turn when a misbehaving prankster urges his fellow revellers to hold down one of their ‘friends’ as he performs a sexual act on him….
Ruben Ostlund’s concept, running across a number of unrelated stories - which we cut in and out of throughout – may have allowed him more possibilities to make his point, but the lack of one clear narrative, or a protagonist to follow is its biggest failing. Wanting the viewer to work is one thing, but you have to give them something to work with (unfortunately, his less is more approach to filming didn’t apply across the board).
Some of the best comedy derives from the humdrum/over familiarity of our everyday lives – and the director creates a number of identifiable scenarios within scenarios, and awkward situations that should be primed to have viewers squirming and chuckling with embarrassment and guilt (how often have you kept silent rather than admit your guilt over a trivial matter, for example?). The Office, and its star Ricky Gervais, became huge for doing just that. Unfortunately, we are never able to get to know any of the key characters here, no empathy built before we are thrown straight into their own personal disaster or events that already nark us in our own lives - and we’d rather not relive – before we are taken back out of the situation just as quickly.
It is hampered further by the director’s filming technique. It’s rare the camera will focus on a person’s face as they deliver dialogue, and once we cut to one of the stories, the camera stays fixed throughout, either at a distance, obstructed or focussed away from the where the action is taking place. It’s an interesting idea, as if we are voyeuristically listening in, but any initial intrigue soon gives way to annoyance – like being forced to listen in to a loud, inane conversation, or subjected to the behaviour of drunken youths on public transport (one of the scenarios in fact played out in this film).
It’s a shame because there was potential to provoke – the woman who is ostracised for reporting the abusive techniques employed by a fellow teacher, or the coach driver finally losing patience with his disrespectful travellers - but the director’s two key techniques, intended to disorientate the viewer and give us a distant, non-judgemental take on these events ultimately leaves us not caring as we deal with the aftermath of the five key events, and what are clever developments and reveals.
You can’t criticise the performances of those involved – although we barely see the party host or the bus driver – especially the two girls, Linnea (Linnea Cart-Lamy) and Sara (Sara Eriksson – all actors retain their real first name), who are believable as the conceited teenagers pushing their luck. The scene where the mother berates them after they are fortunate Linnea wasn’t picked up by a “sicko or paedophile” will resonate with many - both sit glumly, clearly holding back a smirk as the mother’s words go over their heads.
Had the director given more time to fleshing out the characters and stories (definitely achievable given the running length – though, he should have cut one or two of the stories out completely) and less on patting himself on the back for his unconventional framing method, this would have been a worthwhile exercise. Unfortunately, it’s an arduous task to sit through until the end despite the universally excellent performances. DH
