Det Nya Landet Reviews

The New Country is an exuberantly imperfect comedy. Originally produced for television, and well shot on digital video, the film is saturated with color and filled with energetic performances. The script was co-written by the accomplished Lukas Moodysson, and his uniquely humanistic but mocking tone is much in evidence. Like Moodysson's Together, The New Country is populated by irredeemable fools and scoundrels who are still recognizably human and thus, loveable. Most loveable is Ali (Mike Almayehu), the Somalian teenager who grows less grating as the film progresses. Almayehu's performance, like many in the film, is a bit over-the-top in its comic broadness, but that makes it all the more effective when Ali loses some of his lively optimism and his reasonless passion for all things Swedish. There's a desperation to the character that belies his true emotional state. Michalis Koutsogiannakis is appropriately gruff and cynical as Massoud, and Massoud's friendship with Ali develops in a believable, if somewhat predictable way. Lia Boysen, as the free spirit and aging former beauty queen, Louise, makes a compelling object of desire. The trio encounters miscellaneous freaks and weirdos from a wide spectrum of Swedish life. In one of the film's more ridiculous, but funny scenes, they mistake a man they've abducted, who has a McDonald's bag over his head, for the king of Sweden. Like the real identity of the person under that bag, there are essential humane truths beneath the gaudy surface of the film. No one will be particularly shocked with the somewhat maudlin resolution to the story, but the surprises and high spirits the film has provided until that point render the ending more than forgivable.