Director: Susanne Bier
Country of origin and year: Sweden, 1995
Language: Swedish
Subtitles: English (USA R1)
Bonus Features subtitled?: unknown

The Runebergs is a typical Swedish middle-class family with a nice house and car in the suburbs. The patriach, Rune, is a middle-aged man on the verge of a mid-life crisis. Rune is stuck at a position at his job with hopes for promotion, however his coveted job is given to a much younger man. We see the cars racing home after the end of the workday, and we get the sense of the humdrum of the routine life. Rune's wife, Gunnel, has been offered a nice position, which naturally makes Rune jealous and inferior. Their love life in the bed has become practically nonexistent, and Rune spends time fixing their new sauna room up.

With hopes to alleviate themselves of the stresses of the redundancy of their lives at home, the family leaves for a summer vacation at the Pensionat Oskar, which is like a complex of cabins on the coast. There is the beach to swim at, the mini-golf for the kids to play on, card games with neighbours and marvelous weather to relax in. Life cannot get better than this, right?

One day, it is raining, and the family is disappointed since it means that they would be cooped up together in the cabin. However, Rune walks out to the beach to swim despite the family's protestings, calling it madness. As Rune arrives at the beach, he discovers Petrus walking around in the water in the nude. Ironically enough, he echoes his family's words, claiming that what Petrus was doing was madness and all. Eventually, Petrus and Rune go to Petrus' cabin where Petrus shows some magic to Rune, who acts like an excited 10 year old kid. It all changes when Petrus tries to plant a kiss on Rune, which shocks Rune and makes him run away.

As the vacation progresses on, we see the tension build between Rune and Petrus, between Gunnar and Petrus and also between the family as whole. Fed up with the failure of the vacation, they leave the Pensionat a week early, throwing themselves back into the illusional envelope of the boring routine life back home with Rune struggling inside him with his new-found experience, and trying to come to terms with it. Although the conversations reek of corniness and hyper-optimism, it exhibits the family's need to supress their problems for the sake of looking good for other people, which leads the family to hate the guts of each other. It is an entertaining movie to watch, and Petrus is a great guy to look at, if you don't mind my saying so. I give this film three stars.