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The Swedish comedy-drama "A Man Called Ove" manages to balance, shakily at times, between quirky crankiness and sniffle-inducing sentiment.
Ove (Rolf Lassgård) is a cantankerous guy who, at 59, believes he has little left to live for. He's been forced into early retirement at his factory job, dethroned as head of his neighborhood association and mourning the loss of his wife, Sonja. His attempts at suicide are often thwarted by the demands of his new neighbors, the mechanically clueless Patrik (Tobias Almborg) and his Iranian-born wife, Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), who's pregnant with their third child.
Writer-director Hannes Holm, adapting Fredrik Backman's novel, shifts from Ove's slowly thawing relations with his neighbors to flashbacks that show the courtship and marriage of the young Ove (Filip Berg) and Sonja (Ida Engvoll). The mix of humor and heartbreak jars at times and falls into some of the "crotchety old guy" clichés, but Holm's handling of the material and Lassgård's tough-minded performance earn the audience's inevitable tears.
'A Man Called Ove'
Opens Friday, Oct. 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated PG-13 for thematic content, some disturbing images, and language; in Swedish with subtitles; 116 minutes.