The Boy in the Tree

"Göte" (Tomas Bolme) is an handsome and gentle young man who is having one of those coming of age crises with his aspirational middle class parents. From little more than boredom, he allies himself with the thuggish "Max" (Heinz Hopf) and his muscle "Manne" (Björn Gustafson) who make a living by poaching the deer from the local estate. The squire (Anders Henrikson) is fed up with this so employs the no-nonsense "Sundberg" (Åke Lindman) to be his gamekeeper and to catch these thieves. "Göte" is also involved, after a fashion, with the maid at the big house but when things start to turn sour between him and his two new friends, "Marie" (Birgitta Pettersson) might prove more of a liability for him than a friend. With his options running out, the young man has to face some tough realities - but now alone in the wilderness, has he the strength? This has quite a stylish production to it, and both Bolme and Pettersson are easy enough on the eye but the story is really thin. It's quite clear what auteur Arne Sucksdorff envisaged when he embarked on this teenage angst/rebellion effort but he doesn't develop the character of "Göte" anywhere near enough for us to feel engaged with him, let alone really care what happens as the wheels come of his relationship with the not very menacing Hopf. By leaving the personas of just about everyone disapointingly undercooked, these somewhat bare human threads reduce the potency of the rather sad conclusion and it's message of what's past is, unfortunately all to often, prologue is completely dissipated amidst the bare trees. I could have handled it's downbeat nature had I cared for "Göte" but I didn't, so I didn't.