JUNK MAIL
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Lions Gate Releasing Director: Pal Sletaune Writer: Pal Sletaune, Jonny Halbert Cast: Robert Skjaerstad, Andrine Saether
If the eponymous goody-two-shoes of Kevin Costner's "The Postman" gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, "Junk Mail" is the antidote. In this Norwegian entry helmed by Pal Sletaune in his feature directorial debut (Norway's Academy Award submission), Roy (Robert Skjaerstad) is a letter carrier who reads other people's mail, throws out what he doesn't feel like carrying, and is disliked by everyone. He's nothing like Isabelle Huppert's character, the vile letter carrier in Claude Chabrol's "La Ceremonie," because in his debut as a feature film director, Pal Sletaune keeps a light touch on his story, making even one dastardly, violent criminal into the object of humorous pathos.
The movie is an corrective, as well, for those who believe Norway is a kind of Shangri-la, a nation not bothered by outsiders since 1945, a fairy-tale land of fjords and happy salmon where everyone has a lovely, gingerbread home. Sletaune's people are not munchkins: the neighborhoods could make any tourist scream in dismay. The part of Oslo which his cameraman, Kjell Vassdal, focuses on is as seedy as Times Square, featuring run-down housing with barely- running water, neighborhood bars patronized by losers, and dark corner inhabited by barbarous muggers and the forlorn homeless. You wouldn't expect a civil servant, a postman, to live in a tenement in this district: you'd figure he's have a flat more like the spacious one inhabited by the good-looking woman, a dry cleaner, whom he meets and who changes his life. Roy (Robert Skjaerstad), is a pathetic postman, a morose mailman who leaves his dirty dishes in the sink for weeks on end, eats whatever is available, which is likely as not to be canned spaghetti, and like a terrier, puts in his mouth assorted objects he comes across which belong to other people--chocolate, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, even sedative capsules.
Roy is not a nice person. Verbally abused in the mail room (one bully of a co-worker taunts him by asking rhetorically, "What are you good at?"), he takes out his frustrations by regularly dumping half the mail in a subway tunnel and opening and reading what looks like love letters. When he picks up a set of keys left in a mailbox by its attractive owner, Line (Andrine Saether), he enters her home and falls upon an adventure which alters the course of his life.
Combining humor and anguish with suspense and danger, Pal Sletaune's movie--which was co-written by Jonny Halbert and which won the International Critics Week award at the 1997 Cannes Festival--is a decidedly small one of the kind you'd see on an artsy TV channel. Acted with deadpan grace by Robert Skjaerstad, with a fixed, bemused look by Andrine Saether as the hard-of hearing Line, and with comic charm by the criminal George (Per Egilaske), "Junk Mail" is a modest effort, predictable in its outcome, with a script that at times seems improvised (and in fact was developed from a series of improvisations by the performers). It introduces Robert Skjaerstad to a wide public, an actor who resembles Dustin Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy," and shows us the seamy side of Norway's principal city. Per Egil Aske's role as George is hard to swallow, though. The man is a violent criminal who almost kills a security guard in order to gain possession of a key (which the guard swallows), yet turns into a guy who resembles Curley or Moe in his comic escapades. "Junk Mail" is, perhaps by its own admission, not a first class movie but a pleasant enough parcel suitable for some laughs and insight into a region of Europe less traveled than others. Not Rated. Running time: 80 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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