Guidance is one of the first results of the Rookie project, intended to support young Swedish debutant film makers in realising their film plans. The charm of the film is in the detailed portrait of the lost souls who offer help and seek help in a 21st-century welfare state. Guidance is a cat and mouse game between an overweight man in his fifties and the young Carl Arendsen, who wants to establish himself as a therapist. In the opening scene, we see Carl be inspired by a confrontational workshop. The man in his fifties is Roy Blomberg, who was wrestling with a plethora of psychosomatic complaints and has been home for 18 months. The locum who replaces his general practitioner one day is convinced that Roy’s problems are between his ears. Roy’s wife happens to meet a self-assured Carl, who adopts an unconventional methodology. After a little pressure, the husband gives in to his wife and withdraws with Carl to his spartan hut in the Swedish countryside. A regime of physical exertion starts, interspersed with spiritual challenges and a strict diet. Slowly Roy becomes convinced that it’s a pointless undertaking, while his wife at home realises that her husband may have fallen into the hands of a charlatan. (GT)
