Music for Weddings and Funerals

  • 97'
  • Norway
  • 2002
After a divorce and the death of her only son, Sara, a writer, has withdrawn to a cool modernist villa by the sea, designed by her exhusband Peter. She has apparently got over the worst of the mourning, her most recent novel is a success and she feels a new energy and the need to get to know new people. She has rented her basement to Bogdan, a Serbian musician who sometimes rehearses with a whole gipsy orchestra. Then suddenly Peter appears on the scene, and he has bad news...The film is dominated by contrasts: coldwarm, northsouth, harmonychaos, happinesssorrow. The maker's aim was to solve these contradictions in a veritable filmic tightrope walk. The leading role is for the Swedish beauty Lena Endre, who manoeuvres between all the obstacles as she thinks and feels. Bogdan is played by Goran Bregovic, well known as a musician and actor in films by Emir Kusturica. Another leading role is for the sometimes breathtaking photography that ensures a strange tranquility in the story and that does justice to the beautiful, postmodern, yet eventually absurdly rigid architecture of Sara's villa. But Musikk... is also a musical film, in which both the music for funerals and for weddings like the film itself is a balsam for the soul.
Director
Unni Straume
Countries of production
Norway, Sweden
Year
2002
Festival Edition
IFFR 2003
Length
97'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Musikk for bryllup og begravelser
Languages
Norwegian, Swedish, English
Producers
Christiania Film AS, Edward A. Dreyer, Tom Remlov, Norsk Film AS, Svensk Filmindustri, AB, Unni Straume
Sales
Svensk Filmindustri, AB
Screenplay
Unni Straume
Director
Unni Straume
Countries of production
Norway, Sweden
Year
2002
Festival Edition
IFFR 2003
Length
97'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Musikk for bryllup og begravelser
Languages
Norwegian, Swedish, English
Producers
Christiania Film AS, Edward A. Dreyer, Tom Remlov, Norsk Film AS, Svensk Filmindustri, AB, Unni Straume
Sales
Svensk Filmindustri, AB
Screenplay
Unni Straume