Everlasting Moments (Eviga Ögonblick)
2008 (Sweden)
Director: Jan Troell
Viewed: May 2, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
Fundamentally, I am a sucker for any film that approaches the romantic impulse as an agonizing phenomenon that bears unbearably fragile dividends, when it bears anything at all save tears. For me, there is something unaccountably attractive in the bliss of thwarted love. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that Everlasting Moments, Jan Troell’s scrupulously reverent tale of stifled artistic expression and romance, proved to be emotionally engrossing despite its schematic narrative and discursive character. The relationship between Swedish housewife / amateur photographer Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) and camera shopkeeper Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen) is tragic, succulent stuff. Their unconsummated love, exquisitely formal yet accented with moments of profound tenderness, is so plainly rife with repressed yearnings and resentments that it’s a wonder mere Scandinavian starch can restrain such ache. In part, familial obligations keep the couple apart, but it wouldn’t be a textbook romantic tragedy without a violent and jealous spouse, a role played here by Maria’s mercurial, monstrous husband Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrandt). It’s not sufficient that Sigfrid restrain Maria within a living hell of drunkenness, infidelity, abuse, and murderous threats. He also attempts to quash her blossoming creative longings behind the camera, a desire that serves as both a gateway to and an expression of her feelings for the gentle Sebastian. Love doesn’t come much more virtuous—or more doomed—than this.