Herald rating: ***
Scandinavian cinema is not notably joyful, though the Danish charmer Italian for Beginners was an honourable exception.
Here's another, a Swedish romantic drama that explores the healing and redemptive power of music.
Nyqvist plays a famous conductor burned out by life at the top who returns to
the village of his childhood in the country's remote and snowy north.
He reluctantly agrees to coach the rather creaky local church choir and begins to rediscover the simple love of music that once fired him.
But the transformation his coaching causes in village life reawakens old enmities and disrupts settled patterns with disturbing results.
It's a well-worn story but it's nicely handled here, blending high drama and moments of farce with some splendid music and a good love story.
If there are a few choral improbabilities, the film does manage an ending both free of sentimentality and full of, well, joy actually.
CAST: Michael Nyqvist, Frida Hallgren, Helen Sjoholm and Lennart Jahkel
DIRECTOR: Kay Pollak
RUNNING TIME: 127 minutes
RATING: M, violence, offensive language
SCREENING: Rialto
