This is How Movies Should Be Made

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Starting out, I liked this movie's beginnings, with a reunion from hell unfolding like a scene in a play, in the same vein of Thomas Vinterberg's "Festen". However, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that the directors aim is not to create drama or a slice of life drama-documentary, but rather an attempt of cold, dialectic dissection between the bully(s) and the bullied.The film only marginally succeeds at this, and the resolution is prehaps all too unsatisfying as a film seen in the cinema. It feels like a vanity project. The storytelling is self righteous and self-obsessed, the director being the main character of the film; she's surrounded by the 'actors' in her fake reimagination of a school reunion. Here her own performance isn't exactly giving us much to go on, and her backstory is only referred to sporadically, giving us little chance to sympathise. The other cast members play well enough, but they too, seem trapped by material that is too narrowly focused on analyzing, rather than showing the true consequences of bullying and abuse in institutions.Shame for a film with a good start to fail so miserably in its execution.

I've had periods of feeling properly bullied, I've done things to people lower in the social hierarchy than myself that I really regret, but most of all I've been a silent bystander, and Anna Odell explores the guilt of all three parties, as well as the nature of memory and our tendency to dodge our responsibility, in an intense, confrontational and utterly depressing (yet surprisingly accessible) piece.The first part, in which she stages a fictionalized version of the class reunion she was not invited to in real life (an approach that brings to mind her controversial art installation where she staged a psychosis in Stockholm), is pretty incredible in and of itself, but the second part where she confronts her classmates with the film shown in the first half really seals the deal.After being uniformly hailed by critics the movie has suffered some backlash, and was even called a rape-and-revenge film by some, but I think the fact that Odell's motives are questionable doesn't make the film any worse, just more complex and interesting.

It's a not so uncommon movie subject, this one about reunions which become life-changing drama. But Anna Odel's version is shakening. She meets her old class after 20 years and gives a speech. It's about hierarchies, power, games and one of the greatest sadist joys: Falsely making somebody believe you're in love with her.The first half of the film tells about the party, which is a humiliating disaster for Anna. In the second part, she confronts some persons from the class. What's the greatest bully victory? Making someone feel she wasn't bullied at all.It's not a perfect film, but one you will remember if you have any experience at all of hierarchies in school and other places.

Anna Odells first movie 'The Reunion' goes up today, 15 November 2013. In Sweden. Already she received two awards and more will follow. But she will have to pay for this controversially (the ambivalent reactions waiting around the corner) film: in focus her experience in school. Uninvited she comes (too late) to the party of reunion. The one who arranged welcomes everybody: "Great that so many have come. Cheers!" Anna interrupts: reminding them all what they did to her and with her. She was the Nobody and had to be. In every group is a container for the bad things: "A daily battle. Not revenge but to tell today what I could not tell yesterday. I was the one who was pushed, beaten, laughed at, not looked at and not seen." And it happens again: interrupted in her speech. The same for the No-body today. Chaos.She is by far not alone with this experience, called mobbing. Yesterday, today, Tmorrow. Many of us have to live with it, unable to defend us. Laughed at. Unseen. The object for shame. Not one of the crowd Not In- but Out-side, beside the group. Qietly suffering for what they are and never can be. How react? As Anna Odell? It took courage to come late and cross (not for the first time) the forbidden line everybody accepts and respects? Today not as art performance but the actor and director.The setup are two parts, the second as documentary. When she planned the idea, she asked her former class if they want to take 'their' part in this reality-movie. They denied. Of course. Actors took their place. How will the real people of her class from yesterday, today adults, react that actors took their part? To be in public forced to look into the mirror is everything but not easy. For Anna Odell it does not matter, what ever the reactions. The Nobody she is for them. She has nothing to loose. The movie reminds not only of the speech in the Danish Dogma 1 movie 'The Celebration', 1998, Thomas Vinterberg but also of Gina's speech in The Girl in the Café, 2005. Even them had nothing to loose, knowing what happens after their speech.Change? Nothing will change. For many this (in front) mirror can be a reminder of our society: in school and today at work. Change? Perhaps by small islands. Those small islands amidst of the daily battle, that Slavoj Zizek describes as 'spaces'. Not left-right, black-white but by the unrecognized and unseen 'Between' as possibility: our responsibility. ............... ...............................Return 2014-10-11 Som years have passed. At that time I hired the movie, keen to see it as it washighlighted by many and in the media. Now I bought the DVD to see itnot in a haste. I even re saw again Thomas Vinterbergs 'TheCelebration'. I still believe that this movie is so much better, sorough and true as Anna Odells, she must have seen it, bleak copy. Shewanted and pulled back. BUT: the reason why i return: she should have had the courage to go beyond. More. Out to infinity and return on the other side. THEN most of us should have be happy. More. With this action she could have handled a for us important issue different. Objectivly "and" personally. She asked her former class to take their part. They refused. Actors took their part. I wondered if some of them made a police issue of it as they all where drawn into the light. But it did not happen. Why? Answer 1. They where afraid that more by a trial should surface Answer 2. They did not care