Lost souls and lonely hearts populate Roy Andersson’s deliciously odd follow-up to A Pigeon Sat on a Brach Reflecting on Existence
‘I saw a man who had lost his way,” says the narrator of Roy Andersson’s droll, divine comedy. She is referring to the lanky, bemused fellow who has just ascended the stairs of the basement cafe. She could, by rights, be talking about anyone: About Endlessness arrives brimful with lost souls and lonely hearts, all framed in a series of static vignettes, all making vague efforts to connect with their neighbours. “It’s September already,” a woman remarks to her husband. “Hmph,” he replies, gazing out at the city from a park bench on the hill.
The Swedish director won Venice’s 2014 Golden Lion award for his beguiling A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. If About Endlessness risks feeling like that movie’s B-side, it’s still delicious, odd and utterly unlike anything else in competition; a film that makes the humdrum seem unique and the banal otherworldly. Andersson likes to frame his subjects in medium shot, posing them in drab offices, cafes or train stations, observing them for a few minutes before moving on. These people might be exhibits in some tatty museum of human curiosities. If so, it would be the sort of establishment where the labels on the cases have long since peeled off and the postcards in the gift shop have gone yellow at the edges.