Of the life lessons thrust upon adolescents as they mature, learning what happens when a life defined by a person’s presence becomes one marked by their absence might be one of the most common, at least as far as cinematic depictions are concerned. Coping with being forced away from friends and loved ones, or realising that figures crucial to childhood no longer have such a role in adulthood, furnishes many a coming-of-age narrative about growing up, forging an identity and moving forward. The same swiftly proves true in Young Sophie Bell (Unga Sophie Bell), with the titular character (Felice Jankell, TV’s The Hundred Code) the latest blossoming woman poised on the precipice of loss and discovery.
Graduating from high school with all the excitement such a milestone moment brings, Sophie inches towards her big plans with her best friend, Alice (Hedda Stiernstedt, Waltz for Monica). Moving to Berlin together is what their days ahead promise; however a fight and then worse forces them onto a different path. Instead, Sophie plays amateur detective in the German city, trying to put together the pieces of a personal puzzle. Just Alice was linked to her past, finding out her fate becomes crucial in shaping her future.
So wanders writer/director Amanda Adolfsson’s first feature after shorts Close to the Skin, Silent Night and Spending the Night, one as preoccupied with how Sophie adapts to her new existence as it is with unpacking Alice’s influence. Ostensibly, the protagonist is retracing her pal’s footsteps, but the film’s cuts are deeper than tracking a trail of clues usually proves. Indeed, Young Sophie Bell contemplates the manner in which a bond so integral to Sophie’s perception and personality became so, both then and now, and for better and for worse.
It follows then that Adolfsson’s preferred look is one of the dream-like and hyper-real in tandem, suiting present-day experiences rendered so immediate that the characters barely grasp their importance until they’ve passed, and befitting memories and extrapolations of past events as well. From bright beachside scenes to colour-tinted trees seen through a car window, and including the inky darkness of the Berlin streets as well as an obligatory nightclub sequence, cinematographer Petrus Sjövik (Broken Hill Blues) has an eye for striking, colour-saturated compositions. Similarly, editor Britta Norell (Never Give up Son) demonstrates a feel for the ebbs and flows of mood, a knack matched by Johan Berthling and Andreas Söderström’s (Hotell) sometimes haunting, sometimes upbeat musical choices.
Both Jankell and Stiernstedt also wax and wane accordingly as they traverse the tale’s plethora of emotions, and though the leads are often written too neatly by the filmmaker and her frequent co-scribe Josefin Johansson – both as opposites to each other and in conveying their inner duality – the performances let the messiness of youth seep through. As does Young Sophie Bell as a whole, ultimately fashioning its narrative of searching and striving into an expressive, ethereal exploration of the gaps around and because of friendship, as well as the mindset that springs to find a way through them.
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Young Sophie Bell (Unga Sophie Bell)
Director: Amanda Adolfsson
Sweden, 2014, 84 mins
Scandinavian Film Festival
www.scandinavianfilmfestival.com
Sydney: 8 – 26 July
Melbourne: 9 – 26 July
Canberra: 14 – 26 July
Brisbane: 16 – 26 July
Byron Bay: 17 – 23 July
Adelaide: 22 – 29 July
Perth: 23 – 29 July
Hobart: 23 – 29 July
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