The final film in his' Living trilogy', preceded by Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, Swedish master Roy Andersson’s defiantly weird vision of humanity – surrealist, absurdist and supremely bleak in equal measure – continues to mark him out as one of contemporary cinema’s most singular voices.
The film is a series of mordantly funny vignettes around two narrative strands – one involving a couple of salesmen trying to hawk vampire fangs and rubber masks, the other involving former Swedish King Charles XII, reappearing in modern times.
Shifting between dreams and reality, Andersson explores man’s inhumanity to man in a provocative, disturbing film that works as a searing, tragicomic indictment of our times.
