There's a Swedish film series going on in the Museo de la Ciudad on Guerrero. The first film was
Apflickorna or She Monkeys:
Two creepy, very blond, very athletic teenagers in single-parent households compete for a place on an equestrian vaulting team.
The second film was Sebbe:
A very blond, very poor teenager who lives with his mother suffers from both her bullying and that of his schoolmates.
The theme of the beleaguered, anomic child in a single-family household has appeared in so many films in the US that it has started to annoy me. Now I see it in Swedish films. Where are the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the cousins? Can no one help this poor child? If the isolated, single-parent family is going to be a plot device, I think the viewer is owed an explanation. "All our relatives were gunned down in. . .a church/theater/spa/gym/." Or is this isolation and consequent anomie a real feature of late capitalism, where families no longer have any coherence or responsibilities for each other and the children are without social norms?
The film tonight is Bolas, directed by Josef Fares:
Doesn't look very Swedish, does he. That's because he's a Lebanese who moved to Sweden when he was 10. I can't wait to see what kind of (blonde?) family, if any, we see in this one.
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