MikePadgett.com

Together (Tillsammans)

• Director: Lukas Moodysson
• Denmark, 2000
• 

Lukas Moodysson has been in touch with his coal-black dark side of late, starting with 2002’s impressively bleak Lilya-4-Ever. But before all that, there was Together: as earnest, sensitive and innocent as a young lover, yet warm, fuzzy and familiar like a woolly jumper.

It’s 1975 and as her marriage breaks down, Elisabeth and her two kids seek refuge with her brother in his commune called Tillsammans (“Together”). But Elisabeth soon finds that the commune’s got troubles of its own when the young idealists within try to reconcile their way of life with that of the modern society outside.

Moodysson makes no judgements, draws no parallels and offers not a whisper of political comment, however ripe the material. Instead he sticks to the far more interesting business of developing characters and relationships and on such fertile ground the film is happily successful.