Part of an occasional series in which Spank The Monkey travels to foreign countries, watches films in unfamiliar languages, and then complains about not understanding them

“I’m a man on the move,” says Sir Les Patterson at the start of his book The Traveller’s Tool: “I wouldn’t have had two shits in the same toilet.” I can’t say that I get about as much as the Australian Cultural Attache, but from the path I’ve taken in previous Monoglot Movie Club articles – the Netherlands, Brazil, UAE, Japan, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Finland – you might have got the impression that I get to visit a country once and once only, before they chase me out of town and bar me from ever entering it again.

Happily, that’s not the case. To prove it, I went back to Sweden last month, in a return visit that had much warmer weather than my previous one in January (see illustration above). Back then, there was a sudden upsurge in interest in Swedish cinema, thanks to the Guldbagge film awards being announced: lots of local movies in theatres, many of them selling out. In the summer months, the Swedes appear to be watching all the same summer blockbusters as the rest of the world, but I still managed to catch a couple of bits of local product for your entertainment and my bewilderment. Continue reading Monoglot Movie Club: Stockholm Syndrome →