nineveh_uk

When I am galactic dictator I shall have a department of my Ministry of Propaganda dedicated to the production of good romantic comedies. These romcoms won’t actually have any other political message, indeed they will even be permitted to be against me*. But what they will be absolutely required to be is well-acted, not overlong, not gross, not misogynistic, and above all, very funny. The regular arrival of decent comedy on people’s cinema screens will do more for my popularity than any number of rallies.

In the absence of that happy scenario, I have to make do with what is available. Which is why I was delighted to discover Swedish political comedy Fyra år till/Four More Years. I am rubbish at summaries, so I shall use the DVD blurb:

David Holst has been the favourite to become the next Prime Minister of Sweden. However, after a shocking turnaround at the polls, he is left on the sidelines, where he meets Martin: charming, bright, fun-loving…and the state secretary to the new Prime Minister! David navigates a newly found sexuality and a political divide: should he give up his marriage and career for a social democrat who’s had more one night stands than David’s had votes?

It’s 90 minutes of politics RPF come to life. It’s well acted, it’s really funny, and crucial to enjoyment it avoids both “Ron the Death-Eater” and doormat scenarios for David’s wife (possibly because the actress playing her directed it). I suspect there are large numbers of Swedish jokes that I’m not getting, especially given that they use the names and cultural stereotypes of real political parties**.

I think one thing that I like is that it is a rom com in which no-one is ditzy and it acknowledges that just throwing over everything for love is not necessarily something that everyone is going to do, especially when they are passionate about something else in their life that they have already made sacrifices for. So while there is plenty of the ridiculous in it, there is a balancing seriousness about how adults with established personal and professional lives deal with a new situation.

Have the trailer:



(Since I am rec’ing this as a fun light comedy, I will note that there is one comment from a character that some people may feel is biphobic. It’s entirely in character, and the fact that despite his marriage David is definitely gay and not bi is something that the film overall provides a good deal of context for, but I’d feel bad if people were blindsided at a bad moment, hence the note.)

* Up to a point.

** See what they say about themselves officially here. Plus Wikipedia.

It’s the end of term, which means great busyness at work, plus a hectic weekend as my father came to visit. On the downside, I’m tired, though that is partly my fault as I keep not going to bed early enough. On the upside I’ve done some very enjoyable things, and I’m a lot less shattered than I have been at the end of every term for the past umpteen years, on account of my new tablets. Alas their miracle effects don’t include keeping the rain off, but you can’t have everything. It took 48 hours for my shoes to dry after a walk on Saturday in wet grass.

Some things I have seen this week:

Show Boat. Dad came down on Friday night and we went to the Sheffield Crucible production, which has transferred to the New London Theatre. It was utterly fantastic, and it’s a great shame that a production that has been so well-reviewed, of a piece that is not done that often, is closing in August rather than January due to lack of ticket sales. Clearly London audiences are just unadventurous… I admit that I watched the whole thing through a haze of nostalgia for the Opera North/RSC production of the late 80s/early 90s and subsequent family listening to a recording in the car, but everyone else seemed to be having a good time, too. A good solid case saw stand-out performances from Ravenal (a young American singer), Julie and Joe – the latter two understudies, it would be hard to imagine the leads being better. In short, if you’re in London and can see it, do. Here's the trailer, and here's Willard White in concert.

When Marnie Was There To describe something as ‘charming’ often seems a double-edged compliment, with an implication that it may also be rather slight. WMWT is utterly charming on every front, but it is also a serious and thoughtful film. I’d not seen a Studio Ghibli film before and I’m regretting that now, as it looked absolutely gorgeous and was completely worth seeing at the cinema. It’s based on a British children’s story that I’d never read, and which follows a fairly standard ‘lonely girl goes to stay with people in the countryside and meets a mysterious child who lives in an old house’ trajectory, but the depiction of the children’s friendship and their lives is done with a wonderful sensitivity. We saw the subtitled version, trailer here.

Eddie Izzard: Force Majeure It’s not that I’m not accustomed to attending performances in a foreign language – I like opera, after all. It’s just that they often have surtitles, and even then you don’t need to know more than the plot. Whereas this was in German, on account of the titles for the English hour of the three-hour show being sold out.

It turns out that with a little preparation to drag ye olde GCSE more to the forefront of the mind, Eddie Izzard is surprisingly easy to understand in German. For a start, he’s British, so he speaks with the “British person talking foreign” accent that I’m used to. But also the nature of his comedy works well even if you don’t get every world. The conceit of taking a concept and drawing it out to ever-absurder lengths means that as long as you can grasp the concept you can go with it. I got completely lost only at one point when I had absolutely no idea what sort of frantically-digging animal he was on about. The options my brain tried included werewolves, my neighbour guessed crabs – if only I’d stopped trying to think “what does that word sound a bit like?” and gone instead with “which animals famously dig in the way he’s doing an impression of?”, since the answer was moles.

There clearly were more sophisticated jokes and references that the native-speaker portion of the audience was getting and people like me weren’t, but overall I was quite chuffed with my ability to follow what was going on. All I have to do now is spend the weekend reminding myself of such technical details pronoun declensions, verb conjugations, and where you put the second sodding verb before my course next week...