Giliap (1975)

Cautiously Recommended

Sweden

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Roy Andersson

Cinematographer: John Olsson

Composer: Björn Isfält

Cast: Thommy Berggren, Mona Seilitz, Willie Andréason, Lars-Levi Læstadius, Henry Olhans, Rainer Mieth, Pernilla Wallgren

Dour, humourless, and wilfully oblique, Giliap, Andersson’s follow-up to his 1970 magnum opus A Swedish Love Story, was a critical failure and a commercial disaster on its initial release and almost put paid to his promising film-making career – he wouldn’t make another feature until Songs from the Second Floor (2000) – but it has since received something of a critical reappraisal; that said, it still pales in comparison to the rest of his oeuvre. Iain.Stott