Lena Olin Movies
Lena Olin is an internationally respected actress noted for the smouldering sensuality and free-spiritedness she brings to her roles. The daughter of Swedish actor Stig Olin, who starred in several early Ingmar Bergman films, she made her film debut in Kärleken (1980) while still in drama school. Like her father, Olin worked with Bergman and appeared in three of his films, including After the Rehearsal (1984), in a role Bergman created especially for her. Olin's first English-language role as the sexy mistress of a prominent Czech surgeon in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) is also her best known, though in 1989, she earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for portraying the survivor of a Nazi death camp in Paul Mazursky's Enemies: A Love Story. In 1994, she played one of her more offbeat parts, a lady mobster who takes on would-be assassin Gary Oldman in Romeo Is Bleeding. Back in Sweden, Olin is a prominent member of the Royal Dramatic Theater, where she is known for appearing in a wide variety of productions ranging from Shakespeare to Strindberg and temporary works.As Olin's popularity grew throughout the 1990s, audiences worldwide would bear witness to her talents through a series of remarkably diverse roles. From the straight drama of Night Falls on Manhattan (1997) to the wildly irreverent antics of Mystery Men (1999), audiences could never be quite sure what to expect next from her, and that was just the way she liked it. Even if every film Olin was in wasn't necessarily box-office gold, they were usually compelling. Following the lukewarmly received Roman Polanski thriller The Ninth Gate, Olin earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress as a result of her small role in her husband Lasse Hallström's arthouse hit Chocolat (2000). A high-profile part in the eagerly anticipated Queen of the Damned followed in 2002, and Olin's next big role would find her the mother of a haunted family in Jaume Balagueró's stylish chiller Darkness. Though most of her work leading up to the new millennium had been feature-oriented, she took to the small screen that same year for a season of the popular sci-fi action series Alias, playing lead character Sydney Bristow's (Jennifer Garner) enigmatic, long-presumed-dead mother. Endearing herself to Alias fans with her enthralling blend of toughness and sensuality, Olin was even nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her work on the show. Returning to the big screen for roles in The United States of Leland (2002) and Hollywood Homicide (2003), Olin next geared up for the humorous crime drama The Swedish Job in 2004. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Sex and politics are meant to coincide with each other in this over-extended, dull drama set in 1934 in Finland, yet they seem to cancel each other out. Johanna (Katharina Thalbach) has fled Nazi Germany to visit a friend in Finland, and from there she continues on to her friend's family's estate. Once at the estate, Johanna passionately argues with her friend's pro-Nazi brother and at the same time, falls for the second, good-looking brother who shares her own anti-fascist feelings. The two are soon engaged in an active sexual relationship that continues as they travel north to an Arctic port. Once there, they suddenly revert to their political personas as they begin to debate whether Johanna should stay with him in relative safety or go to Paris where she can join others in the resistance movement. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katharina Thalbach, Jukka-Pekka Palo, (more)
- 1985
Raoul Wallenberg: A Hero's Story is a perfection-plus TV biopic, scripted by Gerald Green (Holocaust) and directed by Lamont Johnson (who won an Emmy for his efforts). Richard Chamberlain plays Raoul Wallenberg, scion of a well-to-do family of Swedish bankers. Although he is a Christian "Aryan," Wallenberg despises the anti-semitism of the Hitler regime. Not content with merely sitting back and viewing with alarm, Wallenberg vows to help as many Jewish victims of the Nazis as possible. Employed as a diplomat at the Swedish embassy in Budapest during World War II, Wallenberg is responsible for the escape of over 100,000 Hungarian Jews, thereby earning the enmity Nazi functionary Adolph Eichmann (played with the fury of a rabid animal by Kenneth Colley). Alas, Wallenberg himself falls victim to a "purge" of another variety at the end of the war, when he is arrested by the Russians and subsequently vanishes from the face of the Earth. Expensively lensed in England and Europe, Wallenberg: A Hero's Story was originally telecast in two parts on April 8 and 9, 1985. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1984
- R
Ingmar Bergman's After the Rehearsal stars Erland Josephson as a theater director named Henrik Volger. He is in the midst of mounting a production of a Strindberg play when he is visited by Anna Egerman (Lena Olin), an actress whom he has cast in the play. Volger was involved with Anna's mother, Rakel (Ingrid Thulin), an alcoholic has-been actress who once was Volger's lover. Rakel intrudes upon their conversation, and the two women confront Henrik about how he has lived his life. This 72-minute production originally aired on Swedish television before receiving theatrical distribution. The cinematographer on the film is Bergman's longtime collaborator Sven Nykvist. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- 1983
When Gary (Goesta Ekman), a somewhat staid and stable architect, and Lasse (Janne Carlsson), a good-time mechanic, end up becoming friends just at the time both of their wives have left town for a week, they each have their idyllic time-off disrupted. Gary wants a bit of introspective relaxation, and Lasse wants some time with his buddies and a few women on the side. Instead, the architect heads into some wild antics (in one scene a bank robber gets the muzzle of his gun stuck in Gary's pocket) that leave him exhausted but happy, and the mechanic ends up giving a lecture on urban planning. Considering that the architect helps Lasse realize how much he appreciates his own home and children, and that Lasse helps him realize that a little fun goes a long way, the week was pretty good after all. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gösta Ekman, Jr., Janne Carlsson, (more)
Though he made allusions to his own life in all of his films, Fanny and Alexander was the first overtly autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Taking his time throughout (188 minutes to be exact), Bergman recreates several episodes from his youth, using as conduits the fictional Ekdahl family. Alexander, the director's alter ego, is first seen at age 10 at a joyous and informal Christmas gathering of relatives and servants. Fanny is Alexander's sister; both suffer an emotional shakedown when their recently-widowed mother (Ewa Froling) marries a cold and distant minister. Stripped of their creature comforts and relaxed family atmosphere, Fanny and Alexander suddenly find their childhood unendurable. The kids' grandmother (Gunn Wallgren) "kidnaps" Fanny and Alexander for the purpose of showering them with the first kindness and affection that they've had since their father's death. This "purge" of the darker elements of Fanny and Alexander's existence is accomplished at the unintentional (but applaudable) cost of the hated stepfather's life. Ingmar Bergman insisted that Fanny and Alexander, originally a multipart television series pared down to feature-film length, represented his final theatrical film, though within a year after its release he was busy with several additional Swedish TV projects, and his final work, the 2003 Saraband (also produced for Swedish television), eventually received global theatrical distribution. Oscars went to Fanny and Alexander for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography (Sven Nykvist), Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, (more)
- 1980
This uneven drama, uneven perhaps because of budget problems, looks at the dilemma of Erich Nussbaum (Gedalia Besser) a German Jew who has lived in Tel Aviv for several decades. Erich is separated from his wife and his inner turmoil keeps him apart from his son Michael (Yair Elazar) and from his neighbors as well. He is trying to decide whether he should return to Berlin. He was forced out by the Nazis before World War II began, but unlike himself, the Germans in the enclaves around him have not altered their old ways at all. It is as though they never left Germany. As Erich debates these issues he leans more and more towards leaving. Transit was a competing film at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Per Ragnar, Lena Olin, (more)
- 1978
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
- Starring:
- Gösta Ekman, Jr., Hans Alfredson, (more)
- 1976
- R
Liv Ullmann plays Dr. Jenny Isakson, a psychiatrist who is taking a vacation while her husband Dr. Erik Isakson (Sven Lindberg) is elsewhere. Haunted by visions of an old woman, Jenny suffers from profound, inexplicable depression. Desperately in search of a escape from her doldrums, she has an affair with married doctor Tomas Jacobi (Erland Josephson). This only serves to spark an attack of hysteria for Jenny. Again visited by hallucinations of the old woman, she attempts suicide. While hovering between life and death, she imagines she sees all the people who've been influential in her life, and rails against them for causing her neuroses. Only while recovering does she learn who the spectral old woman is and why she is undergoing so harrowing an emotional experience. Like his later Scenes From a Marriage, Bergman's Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte) originated as a multipart TV series, which was then pared down into a two-hour-plus feature film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, (more)
