Involuntary (2008)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I really cannot stand all these Swedish pretentious and self-righteous movies, but I still keep watching them in hope that something good may come out of it. After all they gave us The Emigrants (Moberg) in the 70's so there still might be hope.And something good there is; quite interesting to watch these people in situations that are very believable and real, despite characters being extremely annoying, stupid and/or stubborn. The only likable character must be the teacher trying to stand up against her ignorant, anemic, moron colleagues.And yes, the camera is very static, gave me a feeling I am just an observer, even gave me a strange feeling that I peeked into these situations without them knowing or without permission. Quite nice, but I would like to see more of a plot, more resolution, that all these fragments lead to somewhere. It just stopped.

Five independent stories which all possess an admirable wit and acuity. They all share one thing - the involved have to stand up for their own will and resist the so often overwhelming peer pressure that we all at some point has been the victim of.Ruben Östlund has created a sleek, straight and accurate film where the acting is unbeatable. We have to be alert, listen and try to keep up with the sometimes very complicated plot. The camera is rolling and it allows all the involved to take all the space. The stories has a strange sense of normalcy on the surface, and the every day situations succeeds each other with finesse, perfectly knitted together until the end without any forced resolution or final connection. It is this kind of story I feel can be associated with Sweden. This may be our future culture imprint.Ruben Östlund possesses a narration that grabs at his audience and he is not afraid to challenge. It is exciting despite unremarkable equality in the presentation, and the persons in the five stories, feel very real.

This film has been highly appreciated by critics and film reviewers, but I find it too experimental to be great. Here's why!We meet some Swedish persons in different situations in their everyday lives. All situations which are happy or ordinary, turning sour due to one persons ill judgment. Taking chances, not taking things seriously, acting stubborn, not listening to reasoning. It's a great premise, and it's a pity the film doesn't finish some moral here.I appreciate some of the filming techniques used. These are great. I loved the passive use of camera.I loved the way this film shows a glimpse of real life Sweden. Some stupid people, ruining happy situations. Stupid, yes, but I bet you recognize the situations from your own life.I liked the way the film takes exciting situations, embarrassing situations, and makes tense film situations out of it. This is a trade mark of the director.The actors are brilliant. No forced acting. Just great instructions.I didn't like the cutting between the scenes. They feel amateurish.I'm disappointed about the plot. It doesn't come out to anything in the end. It could have been better. I'd love to see more of what happened.I think the film needs a better plot. Film is more than challenging conventions. A similar film, which is way more satisfying is "Hawaii, Oslo".

Involuntary is the rather brilliant in places, fascinating throughout, Swedish drama which takes its lead from something like Short Cuts, or the more recent Babel or Crash, and explores the lives and times of a handful of disparates the film believes are, in actual fact, connected by an underlying item or theme. The film attains a similarly sized level of accomplishment to those examples, in what is a piece that probably weaves in and out of more plights featuring more people to that of the mentioned films, but comes out just as much-a worthwhile effort. The good news is, above all else, that it's a lot shorter than something like Magnolia, and as a result, a Hell of a lot more interesting for more of the time.Principally, the film is a study of human behaviour once the individual has reached a certain point in one's life that either comes about naturally through either the body or mind's transition, or is born out of chance encounters people with established jobs or roles happen to stumble upon. This behaviour is as such which has the power to overbear certain proceedings in a person's life on one strand of the film, but is able worm its way into the life of another on another wholly disconnected strand, albeit on a smaller scale, as something else takes precedence – that item itself usually a theme on a lower echelon in the life of the previous example. In exploring the thesis, the writer/director Ruben Östlund is able to meld together a fascinating series of what are effectively short stories; stories shot statically with an aesthetic resembling that of a close circuit television camera, often anonymising others in the frame but accentuating degrees of unbearableness, resulting in the film being really quite something.Take, for instance, the scene in which what one might perceive to be a lowly coach driver becoming rather taken by the power that he has over his passengers. The driver is established to be a careful man, whom slowly plods his coach down the motorways to ensure the safety of his customers; open minded and sociable, he speaks with the tour guide beside him as he drives. Having driven them into the rural areas of absolutely nowhere, the driver will not take them away from there again until somebody owns up over the breakage of a rail in the coach's toilet compartment - because it is his family's business, and the expense comes out of his own balance, it riles him and equates to everyone being held somewhat as hostages.Many miles away in a school, a woodwork teacher himself becomes besotted with the power that he happens to have over a class of kids - the thematic link resonating. His hitting of a misbehaving child and the believing of that to be a proper punishment is witnessed by a female teacher whom has similar degrees of power over other classes of kids. This female teacher does not need to resort to such manners of discipline; providing them with daily exercises that engage them at the front of the class more than any woodwork apparently does – even allowing them to expresses the desires to act out or shout out or whatever by permitting them thirty seconds of classroom time to scream and bang the tables as much as they like. Linked by that illusion of power turning people into those that they become, both stories are at once wholly disconnected in a binary sense in regards to location and the nature of those victimised, yet are at once intrinsically linked by a thematic chain running throughout the film.In another two different strands of the film, the covering of burgeoning sexuality takes centre stage; two strands that are again disconnected from one another in a binary sense of gender and age the transition of sexual inclinations, but indelibly linked by a common thematic of coming to terms with one's urges towards sexual orientation. One strand is made up of a group of oafish men in their mid-thirties; men away together on a weekend holiday that resembles a stag night without anybody in the pack actually getting married. In the beginnings, the men speak to one another pompously and openly about automobiles and how cars are great and how fantastic their new cars are, tapping into that deeply heterosexual characteristic built on the myth of men and their motors insinuating "manliness". Throughout the course of this time spent together, the film opens up routes leading to a homo-erotic relationship shared between the half-dozen or so of them; their stay away together seeing them get a tad closer to each other than some have liked.One instance sees two of them wrestling in a field leading to a mock-sex act, causing the victim to panic and call his wife to drive all the way out into the wilderness so as to vividly reassure himself of one's heterosexuality. The individual decides to stay behind, after all; later on, around a campfire and picnic table at their piggish shenanigans give way to one of them performing what is effectively a striptease further imbuing proceedings. The equilibrium treads in perfect harmony with two young, promiscuous blonde girls of about sixteen in age intermingling with the wrong crowd and purveying their sexuality onto that of whatever or whomever they can; the idea of a group of people shifting into this newfound sense of sexual identity prominent between two widely disparate groups of people. The film is a project, I read, from a breakaway group of people with their own studio producing their own material; its vast disconnection from more familiarised methods of film-making, as well as its highly specific overall look, might suggest something ill at ease or somewhat outsider; but Involuntary is a film with the power to resonate with the viewer far more despite its approach – a film from people whose output I look forward to seeing more of.