Starring: Eric Ernerstedt, Jonas Jonsson, Caroline Johansson Kuhmunen
Director: Sofie Edvardsson
Country: Sweden
In this quirky animated romance we follow Anton (Ernerstedt), a small-town boy from Northern Sweden who meets David (Jonsson), the man of his dreams, only to find that the two of them are inherently incompatible. Where he wants to settle down and nest, David wants to travel the world and experience all the things he couldn’t in their town. David sees their home as oppressive. Anton sees it as utopia.
Beautifully animated with stunning Scandinavian simplicity, this is the lovechild of (500) Days Of Summer and The Moomins. As the narrative pauses every few minutes to segway into a Top 3 Buzzfeed-style list about a facet of their relationship, this is millennial perfection in its barrage of inconsequential data arranged with gigantic fonts to give it significance. Which is, of course, the point. Anton’s world is so small that everything is of the utmost importance. David, on the other hand, wouldn’t give any of it a second thought.
With snappy scenes drenched in sassy dialogue - the film’s only other character, Anton’s BFF (Johansson Kuhmunen), has so much to say about the pair that she’s a walking meme - this feels like BBC Bitesize and Zooey Deschabel collaborated for YouTube and came up with too much material. Witty, sweet and romantic, this stylised 45 minute movie is a romance plagued by 21st Century problems that is refreshingly universal and only incidentally gay-centric. Though it does stumble into over-sentimentality in its final act, I defy anyone not to fall in frustrated love with this very human (but animated) couple.
OUT ON 9TH MARCH ON DVD AND ON DEMAND, RELEASED BY TLA RELEASING. Purchase includes two additional short movies.