Maria, the protagonist in director Jan Troell’s new film, “Everlasting Moments,” would be far happier – and healthier – if she could escape her lout of a husband.
But she stays with him through countless infidelities and beatings, all the while finding solace through the lens of a camera.
“Moments,” Sweden’s 2008 entry into the Best Foreign Film Oscar race, is a lovingly told film with an ending that seems fused from another, inferior production.
The story starts in 1907 as young married couple Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) and her husband, Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt), scramble to make ends meet. Maria toils at sewing and other menial work to support their growing family. The charismatic Sigge finds sporadic work at the docks, in between falling off the wagon.
That pattern continues as the couple’s family expands. Maria decides to leave Sigge early in the film, but is quickly rebuffed by her parents who insist she stay true to her marital bond.
A minor salvation comes in the form of Contessa, a camera Maria won years ago but never so much as inspected. She gets some film and other photographic supplies from a kindly camera man (Jesper Christensen), and she begins to explore a part of herself she never once considered relevant – her artistic side.
“Everlasting Moments” is beautifully acted, and while the sepia-stained visuals can get tiresome, Troell concocts a few powerful compositions that make the most of a limited palette.
The story could certainly use a trim or two, but the real sin comes in the film’s final moments. Troell, who co-wrote the film, wraps the story in a hurried fashion. What’s worse, he does so with a pair of melodramatic flourishes that go against everything he so painstakingly built up until then.
“Everlasting Images” is poignant and powerful, but its inability to sustain that mood is its undoing.
(Photo: Finnish actress Maria Heiskanen stars as an abused spouse who finds solace behind the camera in “Everlasting Moments.”)
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