Together

Swedish writer/director Lukas Moodysson eavesdrops on a small commune in Stockholm in 1975, showing what happens when the battered-wife sister (Lisa Lindgren) of one of the members (Gustav Hamarstan) moves in with her two kids (Emma Samuelsson, Sam Kessel). Moodysson pokes gentle fun at most of these Nordic hippies: the ardent Marxist who agrees to sleep with a woman only after she promises to discuss politics; the couple who earnestly decry the bourgeois materialism of Pippi Longstocking; the mopey homosexual pining after the housemate whose ex-wife has discovered her lesbian self. The film is so low-key that the Swedish dialogue sounds almost muttered; the subtitles are a godsend for American audiences. It’s all very cozy and laid back, set to a pleasantly dorky soundtrack of ’70s Swedish pop.