Ingen kan älska som vi (1988) User Reviews

Bland 80s love story.

[Buster007 · 3/10 · 24 July 2006]

Big-city girl goes from flashy(but hollow) Stockholm to northern Sweden to meet her father for the first time in a decade. Once there, things do not work out quite as she expected, but she meets some honest country folk who teach her a thing or two about life.

A predictable, intolerably bland, and simplistic yarn.

However, there is a time-capsule aspect to it that is somewhat interesting. There is so much bad eighties hair and music on display that at least hardcore eighties aficionados will have something to keep them entertained.

This movie makes an interesting double-feature with Jägarna. In Jägarna, the country-bumpkins of the north have more in common with the ignorant inbreds of Deliverance, while in this film they are honest, hard-working, and nice. It makes for an interesting juxtaposition of two different paradigms of the same people.

Charming romance from an unlikely director

[stefan-144 · 6/10 · 8 January 2003]

'Nobody can love like us', is the presumptuous title of the movie. I would say it's not to be regarded as a bold statement of the movie makers, but a way of showing the teenage mind. To teens, so many things are 'nobody', 'everybody', 'never', 'always', and so on. Surprisingly, the movie is soft and low-voiced, with a delicate, humble depiction of a teenage love story.

This is additionally surprising, when considering the director of it. Hildebrand made a few teen movies before this one, but they contained a rather simplified moral and a two-dimensional, sort of Disney cosmology. I was quite surprised to see him manage a story of this sensitivity and refinement.

The story is not just a meeting between a boy and a girl, but also between countryside and urban life. It's great fun to see the twain meet, and be reminded of the often remarkable differences.

Furthermore, there is great charm in how the growing attraction and the intimacies between the teens are shown. There is beauty in it, and genuine sympathy. So the love story becomes sort of a threesome, since the movie is, in itself, a loving observer of it.

Håkan Lindberg is the shining star here

[Andreas_W333 · 8/10 · 15 August 2020]

People familiar with Hildebrands work, know he made several strange movies with similar themes, youth in revolt - portrayed in peculiar ways. This movie however, is probably his best film. While Scorupco is great in an early role, the real star of the film is unknown actor Håkan Lindberg in the role of Johnny. He is 100% believable in every scene and gives the movie a quality you're not used to seeing in Hildebrand films. The story is not bad, and the Jämtland surroundings are incredible. If you overlook the two strange Hildebrand "speak to the camera" scenes, this is actually an underrated film.

Average + teen-movie about growing up

[Enchorde · 6/10 · 11 July 2009]

Recap: Anneli is a young seventeen girl on the brink of adulthood. But she also faced with a problem from her past. Suddenly, ten years after he left without a trace, she gets a letter from her father. He wants to meet her. So, against her mother's wish, she leaves and goes to his small village, far away from her own Stockholm in every possible way.

But her father, who works as a helicopter pilot, is yet again absent. At work this time. Fortunately she meets Johnny, a kid at Anneli's age. He is working with her father and in the beginning he is her only link to him. But soon they start their own relationship, not easy when your only seventeen.

Comments: This is a movie about growing up. Actually a rather good story, but it seems to have some growing pains itself. That maybe can explain why in the first half it is almost treated as a music video instead of a movie. When there is music, we cut from the action to the artist performing the songs. It has no part in the story, does not contribute anything more than interrupting the storytelling.

Fortunately this trend disappears as the story goes on and takes more momentum of its own. And that it does good. It handles the two separate threads (Anneli – father, Anneli – Johnny) and how they intertwine with each other very well. It manages to take the two threads and make them one. In doing that they let the two threads support each other, instead of taking each other's time and competing for screen time. That's the strength of it.

One other interesting part of it is the zeitgeist. It lends quite a lot of the music, clothes and hairstyles of its time. Sure, that makes it a good view into the past, but it does give watching it today a little humoristic twist. Did we really look that way? This is, however, one of the better Swedish movies. Why? It has an idea and tries to do the best with it. Nothing more. It is not affected of one of the main diseases of Swedish movies. It does not try to be everything. It doesn't try to be the best movie of all time. It doesn't try to analyze and explain why the society looks like it does. It doesn't try to give an explanation of why Anneli's father left, or why she is desperate to meet him. It just says he did and she does. And then it sees what happens from there. It doesn't try to do too much. Knowing its own strength. That I like.

6/10