JUNK MAIL (director: Pal Sletaune; cast: Robert Skjaerstad (Roy), Andrine Saether (Line), Per Ergil Aske (Georg), Eli Anne Linnestad (Betsy), 1997-Norway)
This Buster Keaton wannabe movie is supposedly a comedy/romance about an inept, morose Oslo mailman, Roy (Skjaerstad), who is not respected by his fellow workers and shows he is not satisfied with his job, somehow taking this frustration out by not delivering heaps of mail, which he dumps out regularly at some railroad underpass and by steaming open other letters and reading them. He is a sleaze, a frequenter of porn book shops and lowlife night spots. His life is a dreary, loveless mess.
As if all that is not bad enough, certainly grounds for dismissal from the post office, someone who would upset me, if he was my mailman; but, to top that off, he is also a voyeur, finding the keys to a deaf (she wears a hearing aid) woman's apartment that she left in the mailbox, and using the key to enter her apartment when she is at work at her dry cleaning job, to go through her things and steal a photograph of her. It seems he finds her attractive, but doesn't know how to get to tell her this. She is played in a low-key manner by Andrine Saether (Line).
This film is noted for showing the slum side to beautiful Oslo, where we see crime, ugly buildings, the subway, and problems outsiders do not associate with this peaceful and scenic country. The crime we see is Roy being robbed of his mailbag, but his strap gets caught and he can't even get robbed properly, later on saying he would have gladly given up the bag and avoided the beating the three muggers gave him, that hospitalized him and made him out to be a postal hero for not wanting to give up the bag. The film spends most of the first half of the movie showing him to be a screw off, everything he touches he fouls up, a complete loser-- there is a long tradition of Hollywood comedians who have exploited that avenue of comedy. His comic effect, is a deadpan expression, that absorbs all criticism that comes his way. His fellow postal workers rag him about what he is good for, and a lady postal worker who wants to stick up for him, can only say that he is a good walker, which causes a round of snickers from the postal workers ragging him. What is funny, is the way he looks at us, as he looks at the camera, showing us his hurt feelings and pathetic nature, emphasizing to us that he is a natural screw up.
But the picture has darker ulterior motives than that, it will chuck out all the work it did setting up the film as a fluff piece of comedy and go for the criminal aspects to the story, a decision that has to change how we approach seeing this film, we can no longer be content to relax, laughing at this inept mailman, we have to now see how he handles himself under fire, while the director, also, tries to bring romance into the story.
The romance that comes to this film, comes in a surprising way, as Roy is trapped in Line's apartment when she comes home unexpectedly, and he watches her nude as she goes to take a bath, but what she is really doing is committing suicide. Roy saves her by reviving her and calling for an ambulance, leaving the house before she knows that it was him that saved her. There is a dark side to her that is now disclosed, she is involved with a strong-arm thug, Georg (Per), who beat a security guard senseless in a robbery and gave Line the money to hold for them.
As far as I am concerned, the film loses track of what it is capable of doing at this point of the story, and it becomes a different film, where one contrived situation after another occurs to keep the story suspenseful, with the buffoon-like Georg menacing Roy. Roy is now the subject of a film that doesn't know if it wants to be viewed as a suspense or romance yarn, or just as a plain comedy. Roy still acts with the same deadpan expression, as a result, everything becomes muddled and ridiculous. The laugh situations seem forced, the romance absurd, and the suspense unreal.
At best, I found this film to be a modest effort at comedy, that results in a modest film, barely being less than annoying, but redeemed by showing me the darker side of Oslo, a side that I have not seen before on screen. So I think that this first time director, who is guilty of trying to come up with too many different twists to the story, and by relying on a hero to carry the film who is not very likable, and a story line that is very thin, has defeated the comic efforts that he was successful with during the first part of the film, but by the end of the film, wears down to a barely passable effort at comedy.
REVIEWED ON 3/13/99 GRADE: C-
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