MISERY HATES COMPANY.

59-year-old widower Ove (Rolf Lassgård) was recently fired and plans to join his wife in heaven as soon as possible… but his suicide keeps getting stalled.

Fredrik Backman’s novel first turned into a celebrated one-man show, and then this popular movie. Hannes Holm finds the right tone in his depiction of a middle-aged man who’s built a wall around himself consisting of bitterness and anger. Using flashbacks, and Ove’s amusing encounters with his colorful neighbors, Holm creates a moving and entertaining portrait of the kind of person we normally would avoid.

The film becomes perhaps a tad too cute at times, but Lassgård’s grumpy character is magnificent throughout.

2015-Sweden-Norway. 116 min. Color. Widescreen. Written and directed by Hannes Holm. Novel: Fredrik Backman. Makeup: Love Larson, Eva von Bahr. Cast: Rolf Lassgård (Ove), Bahar Pars (Parvaneh), Filip Berg (Young Ove), Ida Engvoll (Sonja), Tobias Almborg, Klas Wiljergård, Johan Widerberg, Anna-Lena Bergelin.

Trivia: Original title: En man som heter Ove. Remade in the U.S. as A Man Called Otto (2022).

European Film Awards: Best Comedy. Guldbagge Awards: Best Actor (Lassgård), Makeup.

Last word: “I was enticed by the love story. There, I found my contribution to the story. I saw myself as my parents. The feelings were mine and the actors were my parents – when they fell in love, when they married, when they had parties, when their lives were like in a dream. Before the consequences of love became reality in the form of four children, of which I’m the youngest. So my gut feeling was to write the story and keep the secrets. And it wasn’t easy because, as a novelist, you can avoid describing certain things in a home. But the camera reveals nearly everything. So, when I wrote the screenplay, it was an everyday struggle to keep my secrets.” (Holm, Desert Sun)