to age in style

I saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo the other day. It's a good movie. I liked the book a lot when I read it, and the film more or less tells the same story.

A young woman disappeared in the mid 1960s, and a journalist is asked to solve the mystery some 40 years later.

The movie is Swedish, with subtitles in English.

I've lived in the US for 15 years, and it is always great to see Swedish people, cars, streets, houses, scenery, and choices. Makes me feel at home.

At one point the main character sets out to interview a woman in another town. Does he jump in his BMW? His Volvo? No, he goes on the bus, and from the bus stop to her house he walks along a snowy country road.

I recognized most of the actors, but some of them confused me. I couldn't figure out why, until I did some math in my head.

Some characters in the movie were supposed to have been teenagers in the mid-1960s, and the story takes place 40 years later. That means they are in their 50s when we meet them.

The reason I got confused was that Swedish casting directors had actually gone ahead and cast men and women in their 50s, to play characters in their 50s.

There were three actresses in the film I couldn't place. They looked vaguely familiar, but no names popped into my head.

When the closing credits listed Ewa Fröling (b. 1952), Marika Lagerkrantz (b. 1954), and Lena Endre (b. 1955), all very well known Swedish actors, I had to think to be able to link the names to the faces I had just seen.

Not only did these three women play characters close to their own age. They also looked their own age, because (I have to assume) they haven't had the plastic surgery that is common in Hollywood.

Had these three beautiful women been American actors, they would have looked closer to how I remember them: the 35-year-old versions of themselves.

sad, but true

Someone needed 54 cents to bypass the long line and get the pre-paid envelope she needed at the pick-up only window at the post office yesterday. But she only had a dollar.

It took about 5 seconds for the people standing next to her in line to come up with 54 cents.

That may sound like the normal thing to do, but it's not certain it would have happened in Sweden.

It's true that in a country where everybody is taken care of (comparatively speaking), people's willingness to reach out to others has suffered. They'd rather pay taxes, and have the state help.

to all american men: just so you know what people are saying about you

Anna Anka, married to Paul, is starring on Swedish TV in a reality show called Swedish Hollywood wives. Her gender-conservative views have caused concern in Sweden:

Anna Anka, who had a brief role in the film Dumb and Dumber, writes in an opinion piece for the Swedish website Newsmill that Swedish men, once proud Vikings, have been turned into "diaper changing" pansies who are too occupied with equality and instead should be like real American men. [American men] would apparently panic if they were left alone with a child for more than 20 minutes, and don't make dinner or do the ironing. (Full story here.)

I remember a young Mexican-American woman, one of my students, telling the class that her dad would do the laundry and the ironing at her house, but only if the shutters were closed so that no one could see him.

How about some male voices in the discussion about gender roles?

from gregorio