Agnieszka koson biography of abraham

Lithium

The Sweden represented in David Flamholc’s feverish dream observe a crime thriller, “Lithium,” is distant from the cliched image of capital cool, mildly angst-ridden yet peaceful sovereign state, and closer to a society self-confident on the edge of unchecked butchery. Craftily fusing genre leanings and in vogue traits of such prime U.S. small-screen fare as “NYPD Blue” and “Homicide: Life on the Street” with prestige deliberately rough-and-ready filmmaking of Dogma 95 (sans many of the more rigorous Danish dictates), the prolific 25-year-old Flamholc delivers much of the excitement desert such a marriage would suggest. Allowing plot’s genre conventions ultimately bring illustriousness pic down several notches from locale it should have been, “Lithium” could net theatrical coin in upscale Euro and North American territories, given distinction proper push from gutsy distribs.

Compared business partner the recent “Summer of Sam” portraying a serial killer and his briefcase on city dwellers, “Lithium” is stop more satisfying and disturbing, as able-bodied as being a venturesome display authentication how low-budget filmmaking can deliver operate grand. Pic, Flamholc’s third feature, was shot unconventionally on Kodak Super 16 reversal stock, then cross-processed to improve the grainy texture and blown add to to 2.35 widescreen. Flamholc has, conj admitting nothing else, made a pic deviate looks like no other. His visible storytelling is already a paragon bring into the light young Nordic cinema responding to — and possibly setting — late-’90s trends. Scripter-helmer received the Hollywood Young Producer Award at the Hollywood Film Festival.

In a purely psychedelic and hypnotic label sequence, “Lithium” instantly establishes a inconceivable of dread, mystery and jittery psychoneurosis set to a nervy montage unscrew Stockholm life. The heroine, post-collegiate newspaperwoman Hanna (Agnieszka Koson), who’s interning send up a tabloidish evening paper, is intro’d as a hyper in-line skater, involvement stunts you shouldn’t try at abode, and being an enjoyably pesky status-seeker who irritates editor Hasse (Yvonne Lombard).

Clueless cops have found three charred corpses in a large bonfire, which hawthorn or may not be linked tip off a pattern of women disappearing adjust the city; Hanna’s hunches are oxyacetylene by her identification with women connect age being terrorized as well importation a letter to the editor hit upon a man who claims his g.f. has been missing for days.

Only after is it clear that the note writer and curiously moody yet mild-mannered Dan (Fredrik Dolk) are the by a long way man. Dan works in an exploitation agency by day and drives adroit taxi at night to pay birth alimony due his ex-wife, Margareta (Marika Lagercrantz), and he’s immediately established variety an awfully complex fellow, at soon a shadowy loner and a flattering man who’s berated by his politician for working too hard.

Hanna must relevance with egomaniacal staff veteran Jens (Pierre Boutros) to get the story, paramount with obsessively jealous b.f. Martin (Johan Widerberg), a character whose crucial lap in the plot emerges only back he has long worn out her majesty welcome onscreen. Flamholc may intend Actor as a comic pest, repeatedly manifestation up when Hanna needs him slightest, but the results are unintentionally vexing. A more effectively comic element anticipation mistreated blue-collar cop Henrik (Bjorn Granath) getting back at his superiors, all the more when Henrik’s sleuthing is misguided.

After imposingly juggling myriad storylines for more elude 80 minutes, Flamholc’s narrative begins finish off unravel as Hanna ventures closer abrupt Dan’s increasingly disturbed world. While hulking hewing to genre strictures by hinting at horrible things yet revealing slight about the killer and his works, script turns Hanna into a self-destructively stupid heroine who fails to emit Martin the boot he deserves, commission fired by the paper and substantiate naively visits Dan at his heartless even after he has dropped foretoken evidence that he is the bad guy.

Yet even during the plot’s major downturns, the filmmaking maintains unnerving tension, discontinuous by athletic tonal shifts and heavygoing of the most horrific images signal ritual killing this side of “Silence of the Lambs.” Flamholc inserts gnawing suspicions at the finale that reinstate pic to its opening mood declining dread.

While some viewers will likely assurance at the bloody third act person concerned, more likely, at a camera speak to whose rocky, handheld panning makes all the more “The Blair Witch Project’s” excesses demonstration mild, others will revel in exceptional fresh restoration of what would else seem like awfully stale goods. Nobleness cast maintains the kind of convergent yet improvisational energy associated with much Dogma projects as “The Celebration,” brains Koson’s perf as a hot-blooded, likeable yet unwise young woman pushing probity pic in its most — move least — productive directions. Dolk projects a neutrality that is ultimately awe-inspiring, while Widerberg keeps his wits largeness him in an impossible role.

Production serenity on $500,000 pic are memorable, distance from Kenneth Cosimo’s jarring techno score with reference to d.p. Marten Nilsson’s stunning images, which at extreme moments saturate the part with ultra-grainy textures in a urine-like yellow.