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Pretty Good

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

The core story, a young teacher with a disassociated husband, falling in love with one of her pupils is sound. Despite some lurid aspects to the first act, the subject it approached very well.The turning point comes in a brief scene mid-movie between the husband and the young lover, where it's revealed that the husband knows all the comings and goings of his wife. It's a beautiful piece of cinema - the confrontation between a man and a boy who thinks he's a man.After that point, what was a sensitive coming-of-age movie goes downhill fast. There's an awkward moment between the lead and a minor character that probably gained the movie more controversy than it was worth. After that, nothing of interest.

This is the life most men wish they had - an affair with their teacher. But all were not so pretty as the one in here. It's a coming of age story set in a time when men were going off to die in wars and those left behind were trying to make sense of it all in a society that was slowly crumbling. More complicated than now but still relevant in today's youth. All handled brilliantly by the Swedish director, Bo Widerberg, who loves to tell his tales in sensual lighting and locations. He sometimes tends to go soapy but held it in line for hi last work of art. Hewas to pass away a couple of years later. But he left us with another tender story for the soul.

"All Things Fair" has much good to offer. However, it flunks on story with a full hour dedicated to painfully slow character/plot development which focuses more on tedious trivialities than character depth. About an hour into this unnecessarily long filler-filled film the plot breaks loose when the protag, an early teen student, kisses his teacher and finds her all too receptive to his advances. From there it's in and out of the sack while dodging the teacher's husband and the advances of one of his school mates who wants to loose her virginity to him. If that weren't far fetched enough, given the boy's almost complete absence of charisma or personality, the teacher goes through a hard to swallow change of character - as we've been led to understand it - while the film grinds on with a complicating subplot having to do with a brother and WWII. When the end of this 2+ hour coming of age flick finally arrives it leaves us with a trite moral which seems to be: Don't grow up too fast as things will get complicated soon enough. "All Things Fair" may play well with film buffs into Scandinavian minimalism. However, for audiences in general, this flick is a very pretty example of too little too late. (C+)

I caught this film on Canadian television, and I was startled by the risque content being broadcast on a non-pay station. This is a story of a growing adolescent boy in a war-torn Europe. The focus of the movie is in the complex relationships he holds with the people in his life. The controversial nature may deter the more conservative American; however, the characters are well-rounded and acted and the cinematography is superb. I have a feeling this director may be famous in his home country, there is a touch of epic brilliance in the movement of the scenes.