Wow! Such a good movie.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Technically speaking, this is an excellent film---with exceptional acting, direction, etc. However, as the main theme involves the sexual exploitation of a teen by his teacher, it is NOT exactly Disney fair! Apart from having a very adult theme and a fair amount of nudity, I felt very disturbed when the main character (Stig) had other sexual encounters with an apparently younger girl he knew from school. These scenes are awfully graphic and the girl appears to be about 12 years-old. I couldn't help but wonder if pedophiles would be particularly attracted to this film because of this. I really think these encounters COULD have been included but just not made so explicit. In a way, it seems almost like the director and producers may have sexually exploited this girl--as she was apparently well under the age of consent--even with her parents' permission.

This was to be director Widerberg's last movie. A sweet family farewell, since his son played the lead in it. What his last words may be, as expressed in this movie, though, is hard to say. There is no clear moral in it, for which I am thankful, but a somewhat distressing observation about love: it is a close neighbor to hate, and it will not leave without vengeance.The love affair between the school teacher and the teenage student is interesting when it starts to break up, but its beginning is too swiftly dealt with to make any sense, and its joyous, lustful phase is without depth. Only when things go awry, does the story get interesting, and the actors get to excel in their art.The title is from a psalm, which is traditionally sung by students when they leave school for the summer break - or for good. It's a hymn to the summer and its luscious splendor - therefore, a lust of another kind, than the carnal one the movie deals with. Some Widerberg irony, no doubt.Using his son as the student in the movie, was not that good an idea, although Johan Widerberg has a rare charisma on screen, and his own odd talent in acting. His father seems not to have been able to treat his son with the same merciless exploitation, as he was quite apt to do with other actors. So, the student is left hanging in a kind of vacuum, as if empty of his own intentions and conflicts. Things happen to him, as if he had nothing to do with them.In this type of drama, it is important that the characters are stripped naked - well, mainly their souls, but bodies too, if need be. Widerberg manages the latter with his son, briefly, but not at all the former. When wanting to protect his son, he actually abandons him - for no other reason than the inhibitions in his own fatherhood. Johan, on the other hand, seems to be prepared to do any sacrifice necessary, to make the movie work.I could be wrong. But the impression remains: the student's story never really gets to be told, because he is not allowed to be present, completely.

I may write one or more spoilers below.This film is absolutely superb. I have watched literally thousands of films, and this is one of the very best, if not *the* best film I have ever seen. But out of 656 votes for this film that have appeared on this site at the time of writing, only 135 of them are a 10 (out of 10). (I voted for this film and gave it a 10 of course.) So evidently a lot of people disagree with me. Why is this? I don't know, but I suspect strongly the fact that this film is not in English and has no actor or actress in it who is a star in the English-speaking world is part of the answer.Anyway, on to why this film is perhaps the greatest of all time. Well, first, it has an absolutely enthralling, extremely enjoyable, absorbing, logical, and coherent plot in which one totally loses oneself. But a lot of films have that. It also has completely believable, realistic, three-dimensional, fully fleshed-out, fascinating, irresistible, absolutely delicious characters of great psychological depth who the viewer really cares about and whose actions, thoughts, feelings, and situations one can strongly sympathise and deeply identify with. Other films have that. It is filmed in a truly magnificent, highly technically-proficient, beautiful, elegant, and satisfying style. But several other films have that too. It has an important, fundamental, universal and very human theme. A few other films, perhaps, have that as well. But this film, triumphantly, also has superlative direction and world-beating actors and actresses who are completely at ease and comfortable with their roles which they seem to slip into effortlessly, and whose performances have never been bettered and are all the more remarkable considering the age of some of them. And, as if all this were not enough, this film is at all times open, innocent, honest, and consistent, and at no times hackneyed, cowardly, patronising, or self-censoring. I'm not sure any other film has all these qualities in addition to all of the ones aforementioned.This is not like most films, which, however believable and realistic, are still obviously films: staged productions with endings already pre-set from the beginning and people who aren't living out their own real lives but are instead acting out the imaginary lives of fictitious personalities. No, this, more than being merely entirely believable and realistic, is moreover like a slice of real life actually being carried out as you are watching it by real people who are living out their own real lives.This film is, in short, an absolute must-see, especially, perhaps, for youngsters. It goes to prove, once and for all, that, contrary to what many people seem to think, there is more to non-English-language films than just Seven Samurai. Moreover, it is yet another example that demonstrates the fact that English-language films are, in general, vastly inferior, and that those lazy, nationalistic, tunnel-visioned viewers who refuse to read subtitles are missing out on a veritable Babette's Feast of viewing pleasure, and may be watching their films in widescreen, but are choosing them while wearing blinkers.----------------Comments on the above review are always appreciated, especially those from people who have seen this film.

Watching "All Things Fair" as it showed on TV here in Canada on CBC public network last night, was a treat. Only my sensible, nagging partner coaxing me to get to bed on a work night persuaded me we could trust the VCR to tape the last hour or so. Fortunately for his neck, the tape ran out during the closing credits and not before!What I liked most about the film (with English subtitles) was the complexity of Sig's world and his relationships. It's a very real world feeling on screen, full of quirky believability, despite Sig's unusual arrangement with his teacher. Though I know of a real life story resembling Sig's relationship with his teacher that went very differently for the teacher--ending in her virtual ruin--the behaviour of these film characters, the outcome and the aftermath, rings true nonetheless. No character is one-dimensional, even though the film schools us to sympathize with the choices of some and to repudiate others.It's delightful to find in the credits that the director gave the plum lead role to his son. It takes an admirable trust, I think, to turn over a role like this to one's own young kin, complete with whatever there is in the script that MIGHT be autobiographical.The female solo vocals in the soundtrack were wonderful. Now, I just need to found out who was singing like a bell whenever love or pain swelled in the story.