Gösta Ekman, Jr. Movies

A troubled young woman resists reform and pays the consequences in this drama. The new trouble begins after she is paroled from reform school and is sent to work in the country. She is not interested in working and so violates her parole and returns to Stockholm to hang out with members of her old gang. She begins a series of affairs after her ex-boyfriend rejects her. She then begins dating a drug dealer whom the police are watching. One night, she shows up drunk at his flat. There she is arrested and sent back to reform school. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Old morals fall by the wayside as a young couple agrees to have a child out of wedlock. The woman is a young veterinarian who is drifting apart from her lover. She agrees to have his baby even though their future as a couple is clouded, and they vow to stay together at least until the baby is born. Open discussions with friends about love, sex, mortality and emotional needs are featured between the couple and their friends. The couple forgoes the traditional relationship of marriage and long-term fidelity, allowing for a new found freedom to escape the confining unions of past generations. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

A university professor (Gosta Ekman) and his wife (Adriana Asti) hire a young man (Lars Ekborg) to help the professor arrange his papers for publication. The young man comes to live with the couple and leaves his mistress (Agneta Ekmanner) to take the position. The young man discovers very quickly that things are not quite right with the dysfunctional duo. He suspects the wife of trying to poison the professor, who mistreats and degrades his wife by humiliating her in front of the young man. The wife and the young man end up having sex while the professor goes after the young man's mistress. Soon the men swap partners and the blur between reality and fantasy continues in this erotic and confusing feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This Swedish satire/fantasy presciently lampoons the high-minded scheme of a multinational conglomerate to transform a large section of Sweden into a nature preserve and vacation resort, long before such issues arose in the development of Disney World/Paris. The corporation intends to transform a region of Sweden into "Angel Territory." The locals look favorably on the idea until they begin to consider who would benefit from this change. As that would only be those who are the already wealthy land and business owners, they come to oppose the scheme. The mystical beasts of Sweden, including giants, enlist on the side of these people, and battle the corporation, the rich of the region, and dragons. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Tender hearts unite an unlikely couple: Tage Danielsson here plays a giant of a man, Lena Nyman his quite tiny wife. In their happy household they have two of everything. For example, they have large and small beds, chairs, toilets, alarm clocks, etc. Tage reminisces about his childhood when he viewed everyone else he knew as a policeman of some sort. Suddenly, their lives are disrupted by an escaped convict. Against their better judgment they call the police, and he is put behind bars once more. They later repent however, and, through an outrageous scheme, pry the miscreant from the safety of his cell in order to teach him how to live. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Rarely does a film do homage to a serious artist through the medium of a madcap farce, as this one does; however, Picasso was known for an irreverent and ribald sense of humor which is quite in line with this Swedish film, Picassos Aeventyr. In a skit recounting his birth, a woman's heavy breathing is demonstrated to have nothing to do with childbirth. Another skit features an appearance by Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, played by two very masculine men in dowdy drag. In one particularly irreverent scene, Dr. Albert Schweitzer operates on Picasso. Picasso (Goesta Ekman) himself escapes the excessive commercialization of his works through a kind of suicidal self-transcendance. Told in a stripped-down mixture of French, Spanish and English, most will have no difficulty understanding the film's humor. Picassos Aeventyr is done in a style which has been compared that of Mel Brooks; as with Brooks' works, and some might not appreciate its broad humor. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this film based on a novel by Amalie Skram, Lucie is a dance-hall girl in 1880s Norway who is overjoyed at the prospect of marriage to a wealthy, upper-class lawyer. After their marriage, she discovers that not only will she be forever shunned by Oslo society, but that her husband is a narrow-minded and controlling man. Infuriated by the way she is treated at one party, she runs away to a park and is raped by a ghoulishly unattractive old man, with a huge mole on his cheek, who makes her pregnant. When her pregnancy is discovered, her husband becomes kinder, but when the baby is born with a huge mole in the same position as that on her rapist, the frustrated woman cannot bear any more and simply dies. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The title of this comedy is the first indication of the absurd: "sopor" means "trash" in Swedish and the acronym that is the film's title is playing with words to name a make-believe organization that stands up for the lowly or forgotten in society. About 1000 children of SOPOR unload from the subway one morning, march to the Royal Palace, and proceed to blithely take it over, holding the royal family up for a very reasonable ransom: they want the powers-that-be to reconsider their treatment of neglected or unpopular groups, like the elderly and in the case of this film, those who protest the development of nuclear power plants (a contemporary issue). Queen Sylvia (Gynet Movig), King Carl-Gustaf (Brasse Braennstroem), and Princess Victoria (Lena Nyman) are hostages who take kindly to the children's efforts, but given their status as royals, the best of Sweden's security police are out to free them by any devious means possible. This includes a security police chief launching into various character disguises and the opposition leader sweet-talking the children as only a politco with years of self-promotion can do. As broadly-painted characters from the government move in and out of the scenes, the spoof zeros in on real politicians. The satire does not bite lethally, and still leaves the audience something to chew on once the laughter has subsided. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This is a visually opulent story -- geared to a young adult level -- of King Charles the XII of Sweden and how he once tried for five years (1709-1714) to convince the Turks to help him conquer Czar Peter the Great of Russia -- and failed. According to this filmed version of history, seen through the eyes of a Swedish lieutenant, the Turks were equally willing to join with the Russians, or just send Charles back to Sweden. The line between tragedy and farce blurs as the king and his lieutenant try to find a way out of their predicament. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this comedic children's film, a little girl is left under the care of a chemistry student researcher while her father tries to escape from two gangsters (who occasion several laughs). The young chemistry student is not only "saddled" with the girl, but with homework for a crazy professor, and with problems when the gangsters decide the next best thing to do is to kidnap the little girl. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this tour-de-force, an amusing and successful low-budget crime-comedy, Tobbe (Gosta Ekman) gains consciousness in his bed one morning with a world-class hangover, and groaning, realizes that there is a woman sleeping next to him. In pops Bertil (Sten Ljunggren), who was also at the party but is much less the worse for the wear-and-tear of the evening's celebrations. Bertil is a doctor, and when he notices the woman he checks her inert form out and quickly discovers that she is not sleeping, she is dead. Now the two buddies have a serious problem on their hands, and as they exchange lies about what their relationships to the dead woman really were, the lies start slipping and sliding until the truth comes out -- and the two men have to figure out how to dispense of the corpse. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The police are characteristically clumsy and the trio of thieves at the heart of this farce are at least partially inept, the comedy somehow falls between the cracks. Sickan Jonsson (Gosta Ekman Jr.) is the head of the trio of thieves, Ragnar (Ulf Brunnberg) and Dynamite Harry (Bjorn Gustafson) bring up the rear. Even though the three of them are probably worse off than Jonsson alone, they still take on a scam that involves a business magnate and his plan to sell a top-of-the-line piece of electronics to Russia. The Jonsson League is clearly out of their league on that one, and in several other schemes they devise to make a quick "kronor". ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this detective mystery based on the novel Kronvittnet or Experiment in Murder by Maarten Hart, a respected scientist is suspected of murder when a young woman who has recently visited his laboratory is discovered to be missing. Police detective Lambert (Gosta Ekman) investigates the case, and finds plenty of evidence of the visit, but no body. He also finds clues that lead him to suspect that the scientist's laboratory is a front for a drug ring's manufacturing plant. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide