It would be criminally unfair to both the filmmakers and audiences to divulge much or any of the plot of The Ape, Jesper Ganslandt's astonishing new feature. The film rests on unexpected turns and a pervasive, relentless sense of unease. For about the first third, we do not know exactly what's going on. Even the lead actor, who is featured in every scene, didn't know what was going to happen from one scene to the next. He was simply led to various locations. For much of the action, the camera appears to be chasing desperately after him.
The film opens with Krister (Olle Sarri) waking up on a bathroom floor, filthy and disoriented. He hurries out of the house and rushes off to work, frantically rearranging his day over his cellphone. We find out that he works as a driving instructor, but within a few minutes he viciously berates one of his clients then storms off, all the while screeching at his bosses and co-workers over his headset. What follows is a long day's journey into an increasingly dark night, with each new revelation more shattering than the last.
Along with filmmakers like Ruben Östlund (Involuntary), Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), and Fredrik Wenzel and Henrik Hellström (Burrowing), Ganslandt is taking Swedish cinema in a radically new direction. These directors owe more to Lukas Moodysson and Roy Andersson than Ingmar Bergman or Jan Troell, and are sympatico with the Dardennes or Austrian maverick Ulrich Seidl in their emphasis on harsh realities, formal invention and oblique narratives.
Ganslandt's first feature, Falkenberg Farewell (a kind of Swedish I Vitelloni focusing on terminally bored twentysomethings), established him as a director skilled at atmosphere and capable of portraying the sensibilities of the dispossessed. Only the finest and rarest works of art attempt to elicit empathy for the unsympathetic. In his insistence that we follow a character we would normally dismiss, Ganslandt confirms that he is an artist to be reckoned with. He may in fact be the most daring of the filmmakers to emerge from Sweden in the last decade.
Steve Gravestock
Jesper Ganslandt was born in Falkenberg, Sweden. He is a self-taught filmmaker who has directed a number of music videos and short films, in addition to directing and editing for television. His first feature film,
Falkenberg Farewell (06), screened at the Festival in 2006 in the Discovery programme. He has since co-directed the documentary
The Film I'm No Longer Talking About (09).
The Ape (09) is his most recent film.