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Poster for You, the Living

You, the Living

2007 · 1h 33m · Not Rated Comedy, Drama, Music
Directed by Roy Andersson

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Overview

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
98%
Tomatometer
Fresh

You, the Living suggests that we would do well to discover the joy we find in each other that so often goes along with the pain.

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Fresh

Essentially indescribable, You, the Living offers little help to anyone trying to get a handle on it in terms of a traditional narrative. But it can be quite funny if you're susceptible to Andersson's curious way of capturing the human comedy.

John Hartl, Seattle Times
Fresh

"Keaton-esque" hardly begins to describe this brutally deadpan comedy by Swedish director Roy Andersson (Songs From the Second Floor), who seems to have translated the entire range of human misery into a loosely connected series of slapstick gags.

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
Fresh

The result is in some ways a comedy with a twist of the knife, and in other ways, a film like nobody else has ever made -- except for its director, Roy Andersson of Sweden. Andersson's You, the Living is hypnotic.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh

You, The Living, if only by virtue of a more intimate scale than Songs, benefits from a lightness of touch and even a thin sliver of optimism in some sequences.

Scott Tobias, AV Club

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