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Mitt Liv Som Hund (1985)
(aka My Life as a Dog)

A review by Damian Cannon.
Copyright © Movie Reviews UK 1997
A bittersweet and memorably accurate sketch of childhood, repeated moments of recognition make My Life as a Dog a joy from beginning to end. Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) lives with his mother (Anki Liden) and brother Erik (Manfred Serner); since his father hauls bananas in the tropics they're effectively a single-parent family. Life is fine until Mother falls ill, with something akin to TB. Requiring complete rest, she is instead forced to cope with two young children who are always fighting, making a mess and getting into trouble. For instance, there's the time when Erik demonstrates to a crowd of school-friends how men and women make babies, using Ingemar and a bottle as an example. Unfortunately Ingemar becomes stuck and has to be rescued by Mother, a humiliating experience. Ingemar seems to get picked on a lot, being small and inoffensive. The selfishness of childhood is only too apparent within Ingemar and Erik; they know that Mother needs peace yet they persist in making her life hell. Eventually she becomes too ill to look after them and Ingemar is sent to stay with relatives.

Uncle Gunnar (Tomas von Bromssen) and Aunt Ulla (Kicki Rundgren) meet Ingemar at the railway station, on a bright summer day. Initially they seem a little strange to Ingemar, trying to chat informally about the weather. They soon accept their visitor as one of the family though, sending Ingemar downstairs to see Mr. Arvidsson (Didrik Gustavsson) as one of his first tasks. The old man is confined to his bed, from a terminal illness, and gets his only pleasure from underwear catalogues (particularly when Ingemar reads them aloud). Pretty soon Ingemar is playing on the football team, where he meets Saga (Melinda Kinnaman), who pretends to be a boy so that she can play, and an unusual green-haired kid. The summer passes in a rush of events and experiences, such as acting as chaperone for a buxom lady doing some nude modelling and helping Saga mask her burgeoning development. By the time Ingemar leaves he's a well liked, bursting to tell Mother of everything that's happened.

Returning home, Mother hasn't particularly improved and succumbs easily to tiredness (even when Ingemar excitably relates his vacation adventures). Erik seems awfully non-committal, mainly because he's older and realises what's going to happen. Ingemar's innocence protects him when Mother is forced into hospital, even planning with a friend what to buy her for Christmas. The shock of her death is amplified by its suddenness (from Ingemar's point of view) and his feelings of guilt that he caused it. The disorientation continues as Ingemar is packed off to friends and then to his Aunt and Uncle, once again becoming separated from Erik. The snow lies thick on the ground in his new home, where he starts sharing a house with Mrs. Arvidsson (Vivi Johansson). Saga is especially happy about his return, having developed a crush on Ingemar over the summer.

A poignant and affecting journey through the highs and lows of Ingemar's formative years, every moment is approached with terrific honesty. The sense of deep loss and grief that Ingemar feels over his mother's death is palpable, yet he has the tools to neither deal with nor express his anguish. Such pain can only be communicated through peripheral incidents, which alone seem trivial. The confusion of having a maturing body and not knowing what to do with it appears repeatedly, in stark contrast to the lustful actions of surrounding adults. Such an evocative tale depends intimately on individual performances and Glanzelius is more than equal to the challenge, despite his youth. The supporting actors are all excellent but they really provide just the backdrop for his stunning lead role. If only more films could contain characters so vividly painted, people with believable lives and the tiny idiosyncrasies which make them human. My Life as a Dog is frankly stunning, one of the best ever "coming-of-age" movies and amusing/sad entertainment. It almost makes you nostalgic for your own childhood. Almost.

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