Leeds International Film Festival
Sweden 2010. 83 minutes, with English subtitles. Director, co-producer and co-scriptwriter: Mattias Sandström.
Fuerteventura is part of the Canary Islands. This is the main setting for the tale of young Jesper, alone on a surfing and clubbing holiday. He becomes fascinated with one of the hotel maids, Maite, who resembles a young woman called Lina who we see in a series of flashbacks. Jesper’s relationship with Maite is complicated by language (the film uses Swedish, Spanish and English) but also by his memories. What makes the story more intriguing is the uncertainty as to how much of it ‘is real’, (as the director claimed jokingly?). Much of the film plays like a dream: more a set of daydreams than the more fantastic night-time dreams we do not always remember.
There is a recurring scene with a character (real or dreamt?) who is a barman. In a manner similar to one in Inception he suggests counting fingers can help distinguish between the world of reality and that of dreams.
The director and his fellow producer and writer Ivica Subak were there and took a Q & A after the screening. In turned out that whilst Fuerteventura was the inspiration for the film’s setting it was actually shot on Grand Canaria. This was partly due to the wider variety of settings and locations available on the larger island. To obtain the particular visual and sound quality the film was shot on a Nikon DSLR 90 digital camera. Mattias was pleased that this was the first film to enjoy the camera with a 24-fps facility. It was screened here on 35mm and Mattias and his collaborator had paid special attention to the transfer and the image qualities produced. The film makes good use of these settings, and frequent shallow focus. And this and the texture of the colour contribute to the sense of a dream world: Mattias stated he wanted the sort of effect obtained on Super 8 film. The sound is also distinctive; they aimed at a somewhat stylised sound design, with it foregrounded in the treatment. There were a couple of club disco scenes that I found slightly over-forceful.
Mattias and Ivica worked from an eight page treatment/script, without dialogue. So whilst the overall plot was carefully developed the actual scenes in the film were mainly improvised. Mattias stated that he wanted the settings to influence the feel of scenes and performance. Ivica lives and works in Sweden but is originally from Croatia. His input seems to have been particularly strong in the way that language is developed in the film.
One of the bonuses of working in the Canary Island was that they discovered unusual hospitality for filmmakers. Businesses like bars and restaurants seemed very happy to allow them to set up, arrange and film in these locales. This meant there were a lot of non-professional extras in scenes, hastily contracted to the production.
Their completed film seemed to go down well with the Festival audience. The playing with dreams and reality is very effective, and the visual treatment in the film emphases this. I did feel that such a world of dreams would have been less prosaic, and the resolution seemed a little predictable. But it is an intriguing and distinctive film.
itp Global Film 
We had more or less the same reaction to this screening. It was interesting and I’m glad I saw it, but I’m not sure that I’m necessarily the audience for the film. The overall approach (i.e. using whatever locations are available and adapting the script along the way) mirrors that of Gareth Edwards with Monsters (UK 2010) – but his road movie had many more locations and lots of special effects.
The other issue is the Nordic urge for sun in the winter. I guess we are similar in the UK, but perhaps we don’t think about a visit to the Canaries with quite the same intensity!
Finally, I noted that the credits were presented in English – as if the print was designed specifically for festivals. I wonder if it has had a Swedish release?
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