Pure (2009)

Finding her utterly mesmerising in Ex_Machina,I started looking for the feature film debut of Alicia Vikander,but was disapprovingly only able to find photos of the deleted DVD,which was even deleted on the Swedish Amazon! Nearing 1,500 reviews,I decided that I'd watch a Vikander flick for the run up,and whilst searching for one of her other films,happily stumbled on the debut title!,which led to me at last finding out how pure things can be.The plot:Sitting around watching trashy TV with her dead end pals and boyfriend, Katarina starts to feel that this is not the life she wants to have. Taken by the purity of Classical music,gets on a new track in life when she sees Mozart's Requiem performed in concert. Wanting to get closer to the music, Katarina gets a job at the venue. Sent reeling from seeing him conduct Requiem, Katarina starts an affair with the conductor of the venue Adam,who soon shows Katarina that the people behind the scenes are not as pure as the music.View on the film:Appearing in the opening moments with half her face in close- up,Alicia Vikander gives a remarkable (feature film) debut performance as Katarina. Utterly frustrated by the ditch her life is stuck in,Vikander shakes Katarina's held-in frustrations onto the screen with a raised voice and confrontational body language. Giving Katarina a love/obsession for Adam verging on the Femme Fatales of Film Noir, Vikander brilliantly unveils the chips in Katarina like a ticking time bomb,as Katarina becomes aware that she is playing a different tune to everyone else. Playing the music Katarina loves, Samuel Fröler hits the high notes in subtly revealing the contradicting strings Adam pulls at,as the charisma Adam shows on stage is torn behind the curtain by an aggressive cynicism. Joining Vikander in making her feature film debut,writer/director Lisa Langseth (who has also made Hotell and Euphoria with Vikander) & cinematographer Simon Pramsten conduct startling confidence on screen,with extended tracking shots being paired up with Classical pieces to heighten Katarina's emotions. Away from the stage, Langseth gives a documentary level of intimacy to Katarina,with shots in the corners of rooms and down corridors catching her "difficult" personal life.Giving Katarina the purity of music,the screenplay by Langseth glimpses into her family life in a fragmented style which vividly shows how disconnected Katarina is from anyone showing pure emotion for her. Making their final note be deliciously dark, Langseth keeps Katarina the conductor of the relationship,and tensely plays a tune of engulfing obsession,which rids Katarina of her purity.

Alicia Vikander's is stunning. Her highly intuitive, effortless and evocative acting talent reminds me in some ways of Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter's Bone." Or Frida Hallgren or Helen Sjöholm in "As It Is in Heaven" (Så som i himmelen).I could have imagined the movie going in several different directions –– and I did, and wondered throughout. For a more "feel good" experience, I might have preferred a couple of them. Still, it's an intriguing and thought-provoking little movie and well worth the time and effort. Some pretty big lose ends notwithstanding.Good acting throughout.Bravo!

I came across this movie on Netflix streaming. It is the first feature movie for Alicia Vikander, for it to succeed she must turn in a masterful performance and she does. Most of the language is Swedish, with English subtitles.The original Swedish title translates to "To that which is beautiful".Alicia Vikander, about 20, is Katarina. Her character is established early when we witness her chasing and wrestling to the lunchroom floor a school boy who was calling her names, 'slut' among them. This established two things, she had a reputation for sleeping around and she had a quick temper. She lives with her young boyfriend who seems like a nice guy but their lives are bland, watching the telly and playing video games. One day Katarina is on the computer and quite by accident comes across a youtube video with Mozart music and she seems to be transformed while listening to it. She is calm and happy. Then she decides to walk into the city's concert hall one day to find the symphony is rehearsing. It seems she has fallen in love with a music she had no idea existed.While standing around a lady with the symphony mistakes her for someone interviewing for a job as a receptionist and switchboard attendant. With no qualifications at all she makes up a story that her mother had been a concert pianist in Australia, named Kelly Clarkson. But she died when Katarina was only 2. Struck by her story she was given the job on a trial basis. She turns out to be a model, efficient employee.Just past halfway in the movie a song is playing on the soundtrack, lyrics:I killed myself today, For second life replay, I killed myself todayI had too many lives, I did it to survive, So I killed myself todayBut somehow I'm not dead, I'm still inside a head, To testify what's real When truth is to believeAnd that sort of sums up the story here, Katarina needed to kill the old self to reinvent a new self that would be happy and productive.Good movie, I really enjoyed it and the performance of Vikander.SPOILERS: The director of the orchestra was Samuel Fröler, 50-ish, as Adam. He takes an immediate liking to Katerina and she is flattered that a great (in her eyes) musician would pay attention to her. At a social their eyes meet, he motions for her to follow him, they consummate their passion. She goes to his house, they sleep naked, they act like young lovers. But then his wife calls, she is traveling in Italy with the children. He was just using this young lady, barely more than a girl, for his own entertainment, to be discarded when the novelty is gone. Or his wife returns. She doesn't give up easily, Adam instructs that she be fired, she has to be taken out forcibly. After a concert she sneaks into Adam's office, she says she wants her job back. He toys with her, asks her to dance to get her job back, then laughs at her. When he lights up a smoke and reclines on the sill of an open window we know that she will push him out, to his death in the street below. The movie ends with her being re-employed and working with the youth audience outreach. And she is happy.

Swedish playwright, screenwriter and director Lisa Langseth's feature film debut which she also wrote, is inspired by her own play "The Loved One" (2004). It is a Swedish production which was shot on location in Gothenburg, Sweden and produced by Swedish producer and director Helen Ahlsson. It tells the story about Katarina, a twenty-year-old woman who lives in a gritty suburb of Gothenburg, Sweden with her alcoholic mother who she despises. Katarina's unyielding attitude has lost her many jobs, but after seeing a YouTube video of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Requiem" that makes a profound impression on her, she develops a strong fascination for classic music. In search of a new identity Katarina leaves her mother, her boyfriend and her friends, and lies her way into a job as a receptionist at the Gothenburg Concert Hall by telling the interviewer that her mother was a celebrated concert pianist in Australia who died before she got the chance to know her. Proudly conducting her tasks as a receptionist in her new and improved social position, Katarina meets an orchestra conductor named Adam who charms her with his knowledge about literature, philosophy and the classics of music, but her life spins out of control when she initiates a passionate and secretive relationship with Adam. Finely and engagingly directed by director Lisa Langseth, this well-paced and intensifying fictional tale, draws an intriguing portrayal of a capricious, strayed and bordering on self-destructive young woman who grows increasingly obsessed with a successful conductor who she perceives as both a lover and a father-figure. While notable for its fine cinematography by Simon Pramsten and art direction by Lena Selander, the naturalistic urban milieu depictions and the efficient score by Per-Erik Winberg, this character-driven and somewhat theatrical thriller depicts a dark and internal study of character which examines themes like class and gender issues, identity and alienation. This stringently narrated, finely tuned and poignantly atmospheric psychological drama, is impelled and reinforced by the remarkable and emphatic acting performance by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander in her first feature film role and the reverent acting performance by Swedish actor Samuel Fröler. A commendable directorial debut which gained the Flash Forward Award for Best Film at the 15th Busan International Film Festival in 2010, the Best Young Actor Award Alicia Vikander at the 41st Molodist International Film Festival in 2011 and the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress Alicia Vikander at the Guldbagge Awards in 2011.