Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
Director: Roy Andersson
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
For the first 20 minutes or so this slice of Nordic surrealism - a blend of millennial metaphorical allegory and bizarre black comedy - looks set to become some sort of hilarious masterpiece, before the novelty begins to wear off and the lack of a strong narrative thread takes its toll. That said, its very loosely connected vignettes - largely centred on elderly office, workers and their families coping with redundancy, inept magicians, bad hospitals and unending traffic jams - are visually striking, frequently fertile in their dark, deadpan inventiveness, and now and then truly evocative of apocalyptic insanity. A genuinely fascinating oddity, though its echoes of late Buñuel and Aki Kaurismäki provoke comparisons from which Andersson's film inevitably suffers.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Roy Andersson
Producer: Lisa Alwert
Cast: Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Hanna Eriksson, Peter Roth, Klas Gösta Olsson, Lucio Vucino full cast
Rated: 18
Duration: 100 mins
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