My Life As a Dog

1985, Lasse Hallström, Sweden

An unflinching, sobering yet frequently hilarious coming of age story set in 1950s Sweden, My Life as a Dog narrates the story of 12-year old Ingemar, who must reckon with his mother’s illness and his subsequent ouster to the country town to live with relatives.  All of that is complicated by his own sexual awakening. At least his fate isn’t quite as bad as that of Laika, the Russian dog whose orbit preoccupies Ingemar.

The film was a breakout hit for Sweden’s Lasse Hallström and the bridge between his early work directing ABBA music videos and a storied Hollywood career, the most celebrated of his films being What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Cider House Rules. Its understated observations of people in all their glory and complication made it one of the few subtitled films to capture a sizeable English-speaking audience in the 1980s.

“My Life as a Dog is the most generous film Hallström has ever made. At the same time, it’s far from sentimental, exploring—as all memorable movies about childhood do—the contentious endeavor to understand, or at least withstand, the bulldozing machinations of the adult world.” – Criterion