Stepping off the pages of Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel, Ove is the quintessential angry old man next door. An isolated retiree with strict principles and a short fuse, Ove spends his days enforcing block association rules that only he cares about and visiting his wife’s grave. Ove has given up on life in more ways than one. When a boisterous young family moves in next door and they accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox while moving in, they earn his special brand of ire. Yet from this inauspicious beginning an unlikely friendship forms and we come to understand Ove’s past happiness and heartbreaks. What emerges is a poignant and funny tale of unreliable first impressions and the gentle reminder that life is sweeter when it’s shared. One of Sweden’s biggest locally-produced box office hits, director Hannes Holm finds the beating heart of his source material and Swedish star Rolf Lassgård, whose performance won him the Best Actor award at the 2016 Seattle Int’l Film Festival, affectingly embodies the lovable curmudgeon Ove. The film also stars Filip Berg, Ida Engvoll, and Bahar Pars. I sat down with Hannes Holm in Los Angeles to discuss A Man Called Ove, Sweden’s pick for next year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Danny Miller: Oh man, I haven’t openly sobbed that much during a movie in a long time — or laughed as much. I love when you see difficult characters like that but then get to see underneath their behavior to understand how they got that way.
Hannes Holm: I had exactly the same reaction when I got the offer to do the film. When Annica Bellander, the producer, told me the story, I turned it down. This was a very successful book in Sweden and I didn’t want to touch it. I was used to writing my own stories. But then I read the book that night and couldn’t put it down. By morning I was crying. I called Annica back and told her I had an idea for how to do the film and that I wanted to make it!
Did you feel much pressure to stay faithful to the story in the book?
It’s funny because I heard that the author of the book, Fredrik Backman, was also a bit “grumpy,” like Ove, so that worried me. But when we met he told me he knew nothing about filmmaking and that I should just write the script and send it to him. I did and then I got a one-word note back from him pretty quickly: “Yes!” The trick was to write the story in a cinematic way. If you read a book tonight and I asked you about the story tomorrow, you would retell it to me in YOUR way — that’s kind of what it’s like to write a screenplay based on a book.
My favorite book-to-film translations are ones that really adapt the story to the cinematic process. Did you ever see Karel Reisz’s movie version of John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman?
Oh my God, that is so strange that you would bring that up to me right now. I was just talking to a friend about that movie last night! And that movie is 35 years old — I just got the goosebumps!
Oh, wow, that is weird! I loved the technique Harold Pinter used when he adapted that book — changing the interesting way Fowles’ created a story within the story and turning it into a movie within the movie, I thought that was so clever and a bit like how you turned Ove’s near-death experiences into a frame for showing us his history as a child and with his wife Sonja.
Thank you! Yes, the book was much more linear and didn’t have that same kind of tension between the present and the flashbacks. It’s always hard when you have a film with a lot of flashbacks because it can be like you’re telling two separate stories but I wanted it to feel like one story.
It works so well in the movie. And I have to say that the first time I saw Filip Berg, who plays the younger version of Ove, I thought, “Huh? This young handsome guy?” but then it became so completely believable that he would age into the Rolf Lassgård character. Both of them are so great.
From the moment I started working on the story I had Rolf Lassgård in mind. I knew I needed a great actor in that part but the production company wanted me to use someone in Sweden who is more known for broad comedy. Rolf called me up and said, “Hannes, you know I’m not funny, right?” And I said, “I don’t need you to be funny.” And then I found Filip and he would come every day to watch Rolf work. It was so fun to see them together, they really bonded. To be honest, the character I was most afraid of casting was Sonja.
She was so fantastic, I fell in love with her on sight!
It was a hard role because, unlike Ove, she wasn’t in that many scenes, it was much more difficult for her to develop a real character. But then suddenly Ida Engvoll was standing there and she just had this light coming from her, this quality that made Sonja so believable. I hired her on the spot!
I totally bought their love story from the get-go even though it was an unusual one. I was so in love with her I couldn’t stop talking about her — even to my wife!
I’ll tell her. If you come to Sweden, call me, and we’ll have dinner with Ida!
Oh God, I’ll be there. Your whole cast was so perfect, I was so impressed by the quality of the ensemble.
Honestly, our only big problem was with the cats. We didn’t have much money so we couldn’t do anything digitally and we didn’t even have an animal trainer, just these two cats who looked alike — a very aggressive cat named Magic and a much sleepier one named Orlando that we switched off depending on the scene. But sometimes our crew mixed them up and would give poor Rolf the aggressive cat for a scene when he’s carrying him around and he’d get horribly scratched up from head to toe!
The actress who played Parvaneh was so wonderful. Did she match the immigrant background of that character in the book?
Yes, Bahar Pars is from Iran as was the character in the book. The author is married to a Persian woman.
I never wanted anything more in my life than whatever food that was that Parvaneh brought over to Ove in that Tupperware container!
Ha! Bahar was very concerned about that scene. She told me, “I must examine that food to make sure it’s right — it can’t be some shit made up by the prop department!”
Did you ever consider changing her background to be more “topical,” like having her be a Syrian refugee or something?
We actually did talk about that, and let’s face it, we don’t have a huge amount of immigrant actors in Sweden to choose from who speak Swedish. But then Bahar showed up and she was absolutely perfect for the part — just so explosive. I was like, “Oh, here she is!”
I know you had a very small budget but you’d never know it with the film’s gorgeous original score and some of the scenes such as the bus crash. How did you manage that?
You know, sometimes not having any money sometimes can lead to very creative solutions. For that scene we decided to just show the crash from Ove’s perspective in the little bathroom of that bus. We just built that part of the set and put it in a machine that could turn it completely around. The last thing Filip said to me before we shot that scene was, “Hannes, did I tell you that I get car sick very easily?” (Laughs.) Luckily he didn’t vomit all over out set but I guess that would have worked for the scene.
I hope this doesn’t get remade as an American film because I think so much of the subtlety would get lost. Unless you directed it yourself — do you have any interest in working in the American film industry?
Oh yes, these days I have a lot of interest! I’m older now and feel I have a lot to explore. I’ve very curious about the world and I think traveling is such a great part of life as well as meeting people like you. I love having those experiences.
It’s very exciting that the film was chosen by Sweden as its entry for next year’s Academy Awards. Now you just have to make it to the next short list!
Is that how it works? Who do I have to call to make that happen?