About Endlessness is in Berlin cinemas now! Photo: Neue Visionen Filmverleih
Many have raved about Swedish auteur Roy Andersson’s most recent film – a collection of existential sketches which nabbed him the Best Director award at last year’s Venice Film Festival – but About Endlessness underwhelms more than it enchants. The director of the award-winning A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence has lost none of his inimitable style or deadpan charms, but this newest project still feels like a collection of outtakes half-arsedly edited together to make a feature film. If this is your first dalliance with Andersson’s brand of melancholy, then you can add an extra star to this review’s rating, even if finding transcendence within its admittedly superbly-shot but oblique vignettes will prove to be an uphill struggle. If, on the other hand, you’re familiar with his work, this business-as-usual approach is disappointingly draining.
About Endlessness / Directed by Roy Andersson (Sweden, 2019), with Bengt Bergius, Anja Broms. Starts September 17.