Britt-Marie Was Here

The heroine of Tuva Novotny’s dramedy, an adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s 2014 novel, has been an obsessively devoted housewife for forty years, but when Britt-Marie discovers her husband has been unfaithful, she impulsively leaves him. Her story, which might have taken a melodramatic turn, is instead treated with a disarmingly deadpan, low-key sense of humor. In her desperation to find a job, she takes a position as custodian at a crumbling small-town youth center, where a main responsibility will be coaching a kids’ football team though she knows nothing of the sport, which her husband had constantly watched on television but she had always considered a confusing waste of time. Nonetheless she brings the same intense dedication to the task that she had to her housekeeping, and, helped by an assortment of amiable townspeople, is able to turn the group of rambunctious children into a team that, if hardly of champion caliber, can at least score a single triumphant goal against their traditional rivals. Pernilla August lends a tone of wry self-understanding to Britt-Marie, and by the close she has subtly transformed the character from a slightly ridiculous figure into a rather touching one. At once bittersweet and heartwarming, Novotny’s film is undoubtedly manipulative, but in the end it proves an endearing portrait of someone forced to make significant life changes and who in the process becomes a better person through simple human contact. Recommended. (F. Swietek)