By Mark Stöhr. A man escapes. He’s got everything he needs, but that is not enough: a healthy family in a nice house, a sturdy car and a pair of shiny leather shoes. A middle-class life. A lot of people escape from this sort of life, this cement mixer of security and stagnation – or at least they try. Some do it violently. But this man only needs three items for his liberation: a water slide, an ice stadium and an apple tree. They seem to be stations of his childhood which he visits like an undercover detective. His escape is no demonstration, it’s a secret pleasure. He only wants to play once more – with nobody watching him. In order to come to the point: That undertaking will go terribly wrong.

Real comedy needs a sad reason. STIG holds its balance between humour and melancholy perfectly. The short film is the directorial debut of Swedish actor Tomas Norström, who outside of Scandinavia is mostly known for his appearance in KITCHEN STORIES (2003). He acts as his own protagonist in STIG, a man at the middle of his life who wants to be a young boy again and in the process falls down so heartbreakingly. Norström has the face of a clown, with friendly laugh lines as well as deep traces of existential doubt. He doesn’t need any words to make a character speak; he doesn’t need wild grimacing to transport a feeling. He only needs exact facial expressions - he is more of a mime than a psychological actor. This connects him with the great comedians of film history.

The slapstick elements in STIG walk the fine line between control and loss of control, between the life the man wants to leave behind (not forever, just for some time) and the life he wants to lead. The way he meticulously folds his clothes before climbing naked onto the slide; the way he gets stuck with his bottom on the slide and is surprised by a gang of rockers; the way he stands at the grandstand of an empty ice stadium, licking the ice cold handrail – getting stuck again, and this time getting caught by young ice hockey players. Or the way he watches his objective, an apple tree, out of his car while waiting for the right moment to pinch some fruits. The narrative arc is absurdly over-extended, as if we would witness a childhood memory full of enigmatic blurrings.

Norström directs this without relying just on humouristic blow-offs. The way towards the punchline for him is more important than the punchline itself. As an actor he takes his time necessary to establish his character in different settings and transfer his insecurities and searchings onto the audience. The playgrounds this man seeks out in their cinematic orchestration almost seem like out of a fairy-tale: bright and clear in light and colours, gentle and sedate in speed. Whenever the real world, the world of the adults, breaks through, it is sharp and shrill, crude and huffy. When in the end the man reaches for a red-cheeked apple, the most delicious-looking in the whole tree, and comes crashing down, it seems like he has finally been cast out of paradise. It is a sad knowledge.

Links

• STIG (S 2007. Tomas Norström)
• Every Fifth Ticket for a Swedish Film – Werner Busch about the Schwedish film market