Under the Sun

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2000, this languidly-paced Swedish film, set in 1956, casts a warm glow with its tale of a lonely and illiterate farmer named Olof (Rolf Lassgard), who has lived alone on his family's farm since the death of his mother a decade before. His closest friend is Erik, a young gravedigger who once visited America as a sailor, drives a convertible while blasting rock ‘n' roll, and slicks his hair in a pompadour. After tentatively placing a personal ad for a "young lady housekeeper," Olof meets Ellen Lind (Helena Bergstrom, wife of the film's director, Colin Nutley), a beautiful woman who unaccountably takes the job. "I thought you'd say ‘no'," Olof stammers. "I said ‘yes'," she sweetly replies. But why? Erik, for one, is confounded: attracted to Ellen himself and jealous of Olof's good fortune, he proceeds to plant seeds of doubt. The Celtic score by Paddy Moloney seems as out of place as the elegant Ellen, but between Nutley's painterly images of rural landscapes and the empathetic Olof, Under the Sun shines. Recommended. (D. Liebenson)