Play (2011)

Directed by: Ruben Östlund | 118 minutes | drama, crime | Actors: Yannick Diakite, Kevin Vaz, Abdiaziz Hilowle, John Ortiz, Sebastian Hegmar, Nana Manu, Sebastian Blyckert, Anas Abdirahman

In his third film ‘Play’, Ruben Östlund chose to film a true case of telephone theft with long shots in real time. The result is thus extremely realistic, but also loses tension, especially due to its long playing time. It doesn’t help that cameraman Marius Dybwad Brandrud keeps a lot of distance from his characters, so that the shots (and therefore the entire film) appear extremely refined, but the result is more like an analysis than a feature film.

Three boys are in the shopping center and are approached by a larger group of older immigrants, who claim that the phone of one of the young people has been stolen and belongs to their family. A considerable discussion ensues, after which the film shows in a fairly slow manner how the telephone is stolen from its owner without violence.

Previously a director of ski films, Östlund made two documentaries and two short films before debuting with ‘The Guitar Mongoloid’ in 2004. Follow-up ‘Involuntary’ premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard program, as well as ‘Play’, which also played at the IFFR in Rotterdam. For example, the Swede, who won a Golden Bear in Berlin for his short film ‘Incident by a Bank’, always goes one step further.

The story is based on a true case from Sweden, where the director was allowed to view documents from the criminal case in order to make his portrait as realistic as possible, and that worked out very well. ‘Play’ is almost a documentary, and the characters are wonderfully developed. Moreover, Östlund manages to direct the youngsters in such a way that they avoid any cliché about the shortcomings of child actors, and the dialogues are fresh from the street. It’s fascinating to see how the whole process works, but because the director leaves no room for doubt as to who the phone actually belongs to, the film eventually gets tedious, and the 118 minutes are really too much for this to happen. story to tell.