Cinema
My Life as a Dog
Mitt liv som hund
Lasse Hallström · 1985
Synopsis
Sweden, in the late fifties. Ingemar, about ten years old, lives in a small town on the southern coast with his mother, who is ill with lung disease, and his older brother. When her illness worsens, he is sent to spend the summer with his uncle Gunnar, in an industrial town in Småland. There he finds a gallery of eccentric adults and a girl, Saga, who plays football with the boys and binds her chest so that they will let her play. To keep going, he compares himself to those worse off than him, like the dog Laika, sent into space.
Context
The film is a free adaptation, made with the author's agreement, of Reidar Jönsson's partly autobiographical book published in 1983; Hallström wrote it with him, Brasse Brännström and Pelle Berglund. The writer regretted that the dark sides had been removed from it. The first intended performer having grown too much during the delays to the screenplay, the role went to Anton Glanzelius, and the character was made younger, from thirteen to ten. Shot in 1985 in Kalmar and Åfors, in Småland, the film was also a great success in the United States.
Who it is for
One hundred and one minutes, in Swedish. A film about childhood that hides neither illness nor death.
Prizes and reception
Guldbagge for best film and best actor, Golden Globe for best foreign film, and two Oscar nominations, for direction and screenplay.