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The film is set in a small industrial
town in Värmland, where a young man returns to his
hometown from Stockholm to investigate the sudden
disappearance of his sister. He initially has little
success with his inquiries, performed through the
rekindling of brief acquaintances with the odd
characters of his youth, and he eventually forms a
picture of what has happened. Diving headlong into
the shady underbelly of the small town in a desperate
attempt to locate his long-lost sibling, Erik is shocked
to find himself following a trail that involves everyone
from heroin-addicted movie buffs to corrupt policemen
and fearsome gangsters. |
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Pop Matters:
In an extraordinary opening scene, Erik and friend
Thirteen (Johan Andersson) appear in mid-flight. From
what, we don't know. When Erik is cornered by an
imposing figure who demands "the whole story," it's time
for the flashbacks. Within minutes, Slim Susie
resembles that most David Lynchian of plots, a small
town rife with hidden corruption. But instead of playing
up the menace, director Ulf Malmros goes for the comic
jugular. In part, this emerges in character "flips":
Susie turns out to be a drug-abusing rock groupie and
the local video storeowner Gerd (Lena Dahlman) is a
legendary crime boss. The only cop in town, Billy
Davidson (Kjell Bergqvist), is more interested in
covering up illegalities than solving them, while Grits
the junkie (Björn Starrin) fancies himself the next
camcorder auteur, that is, when he's not making homemade
wine out of the garbage under his kitchen table.
The film works these disparate individuals into an
intricate storyline by way of a satisfyingly kinetic
energy. Everyone and everything in Malmros and co-writer
Petteri Nuottimaki's universe has a back story, from a
fish-shaped pitcher to a standard-seeming drainpipe.
While so much information can cause entertainment
overload, the movie repays the attentive viewer. All the
characters, all the circumstances, are equally
instructive. This challenges our expectations, as a
throwaway point comes back to haunt our hero or a
seemingly noteworthy situation leads to near
irrelevance.
It would be easy for a film as scattered as Slim Susie
to lose its focus. And as it openly references films
like Scarface, The Usual Suspects, and
Reservoir Dogs, we remain on the lookout for
possible implausibility in the storytelling. But Malmros
delivers something stupendous, a film that leaves you
positively giddy.
It is Starrin, as Grits, who walks away with the movie
outright. The character is the bridge between Erik and
Susie's naïveté and the sinister scandal they all face.
Certainly, this joke of a junkie is an asshole, all
unbridled Id leaking out of his dirty underpants (his
recurrent costume). And yet he's a dreamer, absorbing
everything he sees from his rented videos and believing
that, he too, will one day be a great filmmaker. Put the
two together and you have someone to root for, though he
doesn't deserve it. While most of the characters here
are flawed, we're eager to see how their interwoven
wantonness plays out in the end. Our interest is only
intensified by Slim Susie's pop/punk soundtrack,
one of the greatest in recent memory.
Some might dismiss this movie as copycat cinema at its
most cynical. But all moviemaking has always been
referential. But Slim Susie makes the case that
imitation is not only flattery, but the most effective
language of postmodern cinema. Like sampling is to
hip-hop, the reverential allusion, if done well, becomes
its own entity. And if it is nothing else, Slim Susie
is one of a kind.
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