Family Secrets otherwise known as the easy to pronounce Familjehemligheter is the film that caught my attention at this year’s edition of the Montreal International Film Festival and which has and is being currently presented at many film festivals around the world. Growing up, I believe that we are all pretty much conditioned to think that the perfect life consists of having “the job”, the spouse, the children, the two cars, the white picket fence, the family pet…etc. Introduce the D-word, and these notions are shaken to the very core of that theory. Family Secrets is a Swedish drama, a coming-of-age portrait (in the same vague as Ang Lee’s Ice Storm) of the so-called perfect little family, the type of family that at times tries to live up to such a title, but ultimately realizes that they are just as dysfunctional as the rest of us are.
Set in the small rural community in the land of Volvo in the Bjorn Borg/ABBA-ish epoch, we have this archetypal family with the husband-father-toilette paper rep. Bosse (Rolf Lassagard), his wife-mother-nurse Mona (Maria Lundqvist), and their three children ranging in ages from near adulthood, budding teenager and peewee hockey team age. They are collectively discovering and struggling with their identities while dealing with each others alienation from one another. At times they clash, as any family would, but they have this support system for one another that remind us how much family is important. As their stories unfold before our eyes- we begin to notice that the typical kiss on the cheek, the typical “how was your day son” bares very little meaning as they all begin to struggle with new realities, the most predominant one is the mother’s decision to rekindle a love affair with her former lover-which ultimately sends the family into a sort of downward spiral. With the husband desperately trying to patch things up- we witness firsthand the painful truth that the perfect little life is in all reality: a myth. One melancholy-ish scene is when the father, fully aware that he has possibly lost his wife, attempts to “fix” the damages of the foundation of his home. Dressed in a business suit and suffering from a terrible hangover, he desperately makes this foolish attempt at mixing cement; insert the words “mental breakdown”. I personally loved this touch from director Kjell-Ake Andersson, simple in theory; this is a poignant moment in the film, a moment that pulled me in even closer to that feeling of having the weight of the world on one’s shoulders. I really appreciated the character portrayals-how Andersson examines each individual story, how they parallel with one another and form this narrative that goes full circle. Family Secrets has some fairly good acting by all, heightened by what I would call a sense of filmmaking simplicity, meaning that the camera lets the personages do the storytelling and focuses in on it rather than distract from it. A well-constructed film that will touch you because of its honest treatment of what is a sometimes a very delicate subject matter and it will touch you because you will care about this family. The Swedes seem to have a knack for making films about the human condition and I find think that this film is a gem waiting to be discovered, partly because of the style of direction and the honest account of a family in crisis, a rarity of sorts.
Viewed in original language (Swedish) with English subtitles.
