A Man Called Ove

There's a lot that's familiar about Hannes Holm's A Man Called Ove, so much that I wouldn't be surprised if the word-of-mouth inspires a lot of Americans to set aside their reservations about reading subtitles and make this Swedish-language dramedy the biggest foreign language hit since 2011's The Intouchables. It's a foreign movie for people who don't really like foreign movies.

But it's also affecting, even if you're able to anticipate nearly every beat. There's nothing wrong with comfort food -- especially when you're feeling a little battered or lonely. Adapted from an international best-seller, A Man Called Ove is intended to reassure us that even the most curmudgeonly among us are susceptible to the lures of cute children and ratty Persian cats. And its winsomeness is made bearable by a strong performance by Rolf Lassgard as the 59-year-old incarnation of the title character.

This Ove is a hard one, the self-appointed prefect of his gated condo community given to checking his neighbor's recycling bins and hissing at free-range cats. We can understand why this humorless stickler was ousted as the head of the residents' association; he's the sort to stare and point at those who elicit his disapproval (which is nearly everyone). He's judgmental and unforgiving, a guy who will write you off as a worthless idiot because you drive a Volvo instead of a Saab. (And if you drive an Audi or a BMW? He can do nothing for you, son.) We can also understand why the railroad for whom he has worked for 43 years is anxious to see him retired. Ove is a jerk.

But slowly we begin to understand why. Ove is mourning -- he pays daily visits to the grave of his recently deceased wife. And he promises to see her again soon. Then he goes home and puts on a suit and prepares to hang himself in his living room.

It is no spoiler to say he is interrupted time and again. First there is a chatty couple moving in next door. Patrick (Tobias Almborg), the husband, is an inept driver, and his adorable Iranian immigrant wife Parvaneh (Bahar Pars) is pregnant. They have two young daughters. Ove scolds them, then climbs behind the wheel of their Hyundai and expertly parks their U-Haul. (Ove is a man with a particular set of skills.)

In flashback we meet the younger Ove (Filip Berg) and learn how he came to succeed his father at the rail yard and how "the stupidity of his neighbors" and the "whiteshirts" (Ove's name for bureaucrats) altered the trajectory of his life. We see how he came to meet his beloved -- vivacious would-be schoolteacher Sonja (Ida Engvoll), who introduces him to Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita (a novel about the devil's visit to Soviet Moscow in 1930), restaurants and the possibilities of higher education.

Holm toggles back and forth between the two Oves, alternately spooling out stories of devastation and redemption. In the present, Ove is slowly drawn back from the brink by his engagement with his new neighbors but in part because of Lassgard's flinty refusal to become cuddly. He's a damaged, hurting man who is nevertheless capable of kindnesses great and small.

While a little overlong and certainly predictable -- and more than a little reminiscent of the 2015 Swedish film The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, though without that crowd-pleaser's sense of anarchic silliness -- A Man Called Ove is an old-fashioned tear-jerker with a certain emotional heft. It's the sort of movie that a lot of people go to the movies hoping to see.

MovieStyle on 10/28/2016