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Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The Last Journey review — this Swedish documentary will make you weep
This profoundly lovely Swedish documentary is a crowd-pleasing road movie that hides a feral heart. Slickly shot, it's an often bleakly funny account of a last-ditch drive from central Sweden to southern France by the TV host Filip Hammar and his ailing 80-year-old father, Lars. Filip is retracing the beloved holiday trips of his childhood in an attempt to jog Lars, a former French teacher and committed Francophile, out of his incipient physical and cognitive decline. Along for the ride is Filip's fellow Swedish TV personality Fredrik Wikingsson, who invests the project with the kind of larky bromantic air (think early Judd Apatow) that's made it the highest-grossing Swedish documentary in history. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews That's the commercial. The reality is thornier. For every glossy drone shot of the three principals whizzing through the French countryside in a vintage Renault 4, there is a growing suggestion that Filip's mission to 'rejuvenate' his father is one of juvenile denial. Lars speaks in a whisper and can't eat, drink, walk or bathe without help. He falls and is hospitalised early on. His memory is fading. And though he is still moved by French culture, and by the songs of the Belgian Jacques Brel, he often appears on camera as a frozen soul who is fastened, in the uncompromising words of WB Yeats, 'to a dying animal'. The film, co-directed by Hammar and Wikingsson, eventually acknowledges this and captures a fiercely sad conversation in which Lars says to his son, with poetic clarity, 'I hope you're not disappointed in me, Filip. Because I'm not the same any more. It's just that time has passed.' And speaking of weeping … sweet Lord! The film builds to the kind of devastating sequence that doesn't just gently jerk some tears but grabs them and yanks them out relentlessly until you've collapsed in a heap on the floor, wailing, 'No more! No more! Jag alskar dig, Lars! Jag alskar dig!'★★★★☆ PG, 95min In cinemas from Jun 20 Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit to find out more. Which films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments and follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
The Sun
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Elio film review: Pixar's latest adventure is nourishing slice of intergalactic fun with nods to Hollywood classic
ELIO PG (98mins) ★★★☆☆ 2 SPACE and sentimentality are the linchpins of Disney and Pixar's latest animated adventure which encourages you to dream big. Sci-fi obsessed Elio Solis (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a cape-wearing cosmic obsessive adopted by his Aunt Olga after his parents pass away. When extraterrestrials make contact, Elio doesn't hesitate to respond, and before you can say 'Martian' he's beamed up to a kind of cosmic UN Committee from various galaxies, including Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). They believe he's the leader back on Earth and Elio doesn't correct them. He's soon tasked with negotiating an alien peace treaty with baddie Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), but this quickly turns into a journey of self-discovery as, along with new wiggly best friend Glordon (a cutesy Remy Edgerly), our hero realises what really matters to him. Reminding us that there's no place like home, there's many Wizard Of Oz homages here, as we transport through solar systems and scary villains. Intergalactic, nourishing, family fun. ★★★☆☆ 2 THIS warm, funny and often deeply moving documentary charts Swedish TV presenter Filip Hammar's attempt to bring his 80-year-old father Lars back to life – figuratively, at least. Since retiring from his job as a French teacher, Lars has become increasingly withdrawn and frail. So, Filip decides to buy a battered old Renault 4, and whisks his dad off on a nostalgic road trip to the south of France, hoping to reignite a spark. They're joined by Filip's longtime TV partner Fredrik Wikingsson, and the pair's banter keeps the film fun, even as emotional undercurrents start to appear. The journey is nearly derailed early on by a nasty fall, and though Lars is slow to warm up, glimpses of his old self soon begin to reappear, particularly when surrounded by the culture and language he has loved for so many years. At times, the film veers close to manipulation. But what shines through is Filip's deep affection for his father, and a quietly powerful message about ageing, legacy and the bonds between parent and child. It's a bit uneven, but The Last Journey has heart to spare – and plenty of charm.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Last Journey review – Sweden's Ant and Dec hit the road with octogenarian dad
'Do you want to rot away in an old armchair?' asks Filip Hammar, a Swedish TV presenter, talking to his dad. In this charming, often hilarious documentary, Hammar takes 80-year-old Lars on a road trip to the south of France; the idea is to rekindle Lars's spark, shake a bit of life back into him. Since retiring as a French teacher, Lars has been sitting around at home, steadily more depressed and frail. Hammar wants to show his dad that life is worth living. But as you'd expect from a documentary this heart-warming, Hammar has a lesson or two to learn himself. For the trip, Hammar has bought a knackered old Renault 4, the same car the family had when he was a kid. Their destination is the apartment they rented every summer holiday (judging from the old photos, this was pre-factor 50 sunscreen; everyone was a livid shade of lobster). Father and son are joined by Hammar's best mate Fredrik Wikingsson, another TV presenter. The two are a fixture on Swedish telly; like Ant and Dec they come as a pair, Filip och Fredrik. Their easy, lived-in banter jollies everything along. The trip is nearly over before it begins, when Lars falls going for a pee at night in a hotel. But Lars is a life-long Francophile, and slowly, slowly, a little of the old charisma creeps back in as the holiday gets into swing. It's not quite enough for Hammar, who is desperate to get his old dad back. (So desperate he hires actors to create the perfect French experience for Lars.) There is a heartbreaking scene when Hammar persuades his dad to cook his old speciality, ratatouille. But poor Lars can barely slice an aubergine. Hammar's love for his dad, how much he treasures his childhood, is incredibly touching. There's a simple, profound message here for parents – you get out what you put in. And the scene at the end, showing just what an influence Lars had on his students, would squeeze a tear out of granite. The Last Journey is in UK and Irish cinemas from 20 June.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘Sometimes when we screen it there is spontaneous applause... it's almost like a therapy'
Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson are in the house. And they are not going to be quiet about it. 'What an honour! What an honour!' Wikingsson, the sleeker of the two Swedes, practically bellows. 'We've been to Dublin! We've had great times in Dublin ! This feels like coming home!' Even if you were not already aware, their demeanour would immediately clarify that they are not conventional film directors. 'Filip och Fredrik' first achieved home fame as pranksters on Swedish television. Broadcast in 2002, Ursäkta Röran (Vi Bygger Om) – in English, 'Pardon the Mess (We're Redecorating)' – was a hidden-camera show that placed both celebrities and the public in compromising situations. Later, with the series High Chaparall, they took their shtick to the United States, interviewing the likes of Pamela Anderson , Tonya Harding and Uri Geller for domestic consumption. Further zany projects followed. READ MORE 'We were very influenced by Ali G , which was huge at the time,' Wikingsson says. 'Pretend you were journalists from one outlet, but it's really from another outlet. There is a little false pretence. Some people love that. Some people thought that was in bad taste.' All of this goes some way to preparing viewers for one of the strangest films released this year. What the heck are we looking at here? Classed as a documentary, The Last Journey finds Hammar and Wikingsson accompanying Lars, Hammar's elderly father, formerly a teacher, on one 'last' trip to his beloved France. Lars seems to have lost his taste for life, and Hammar believes the adventure may help him re-engage. Also, he and his colleague will get a film out of it. They encounter trouble at the beginning when Lars has a fall and ends up in hospital. That is not going to stop Filip och Fredrik. The boys get him back on the project and into their photogenic orange Renault. 'I wanted to make this trip with my dad because, since his retirement, he's been going deeper and deeper into this depression,' Hammar says. 'It's been really tough for my mom. Of course, she's there with him every day. So I felt, okay, I need to do something. Maybe if I take him to France – which is the love of his life – and let him re-experience some of the best moments of his life he can become that man he used to be.' All admirable enough. As the film progresses, however, the boys' instinct for a lark transforms the work into something more peculiar. At one point they stage a fight among apparent strangers to remind Lars of earlier amusement at French road rage. It's a tricky moment. The older man, unaware the event is fake, could be seen as the butt of a joke. 'It is all about execution,' Hammar says. 'You have to earn that scene. The audience at that point, I hope, see that I love my dad and that Frederick loves my dad and that our intentions are good. He loves this. I do think so, because sometimes when we screen it there is spontaneous applause after that. Because they see it's almost like a therapy. We invent a new therapy. Maybe I am being pompous here. But this is a method I use to make him come alive again.' 'This is an Eat, Pray, Love for smart people,' Wikingsson ventures. You couldn't call the film a conventional documentary. I didn't know what to make of the scene in which a French priest takes Lars's confession while the camera records every word. 'We love Werner Herzog . That's one of our main inspirations,' Wikingsson says. 'And there is a movie called The Act of Killing , by Joshua Oppenheimer , that's about genocide, which is very staged and very constructed for a purpose. That was the feeling we had.' To clarify, The Act of Killing is a deeply serious film that invites former state torturers and killers from Indonesia to re-enact their atrocities on camera. 'We wanted to make a cinematic film to get people into theatres,' Wikingsson says. 'We wanted the way they view France – the romanticised version of France that they have in their memories, in which everything is beautiful and like a fairy tale – reflected in the film as well. With big music, a big score, beautiful songs and beautiful cinematography.' He is on a roll. Filip och Fredrik cannot be faulted for energy or for determination to talk away any impending silence. 'We wanted it to be like about storytelling as well,' he says. 'When Filip said, 'Maybe we can create a traffic argument, because my dad loves that,' I immediately said, 'Well, if the audience is in on these things, it becomes an immersive experience.' Whatever. Because it is for the benefit of his father. Let's do whatever it takes to make this an unforgettable journey for his dad.' At any rate, the film seemed to have worked for the Swedish audience. It was the fifth highest-grossing film in that country for 2024 – sitting between Deadpool & Wolverine and Moana 2 – and registered as the highest-grossing Swedish documentary of all time. It won the Ray of Sunshine (!) award at the Norwegian International Film Festival and, perhaps more significantly, best documentary at the Swedish equivalent of the Oscars. We meet way back before Christmas when The Last Journey, following in the tradition of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and Fanny and Alexander, was still the Swedish submission for best international film at the actual Oscars. 'It feels like we're the Swedish submission to the Eurovision Song Contest and we don't want to let anybody down,' Wikingsson says, 'It's like a scam,' Hammar joins in. 'Maybe it's like that traffic incident. Maybe it's a prank.' Anything was then still possible. It was just a few weeks before the shortlists were announced. 'I know Ireland has a great film as well,' Hammar says. 'Yes, I think you're talking about Kneecap.' 'F**k those guys!' Wikingsson says, with a hearty chuckle to confirm he's still in prank mode. Would Filip och Fredrik, as younger cheeky chappies, have been surprised to find themselves in this position? 'We were even invited to the Swedish castle,' Wikingsson says. 'The royal family wanted us to show the film. And we were, like, 'That's great publicity-wise, but don't we kind of detest the monarchy a little bit?' Maybe we should check our Twitter feeds and stuff – to see what we posted about that. Of course, it's hard to pretend like you're the underdog when you're the Swedish Oscar entry.' The Last Journey did not make it on to the Oscar shortlist. Kneecap made that list, but it was not among the final five nominees. The Swedish film then went into a sort of hibernation and now emerges blinking into the superhero summer. I hope Lars profited from the experience. 'I know he's happy at times, and this is a good memory for him – this film and everything that has happened afterwards,' Hammar says. 'The film is a big success in Sweden. That's been incredible to him.' And the lads don't worry that they've become respectable? 'Johnny Rotten went on I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!' Wikingsson says. 'We'll never do that,' Hammar counters. 'No, so we're more punk rockers than he ever was.' The Last Journey is in cinemas from Friday, June 20th
Telegraph
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Last Journey: behind the scenes of the feel-good film of the summer
When Filip Hammar was growing up in Köping, a Swedish town less than two hours' drive from Stockholm, his father Lars's obsession with France was an acute source of embarrassment. 'It was a very working-class town – they manufacture Volvo cars there – and this guy is sitting round wearing a beret,' recalls 50-year-old Hammar, who, with his friend Fredrik Wikingsson, 51, is one half of Sweden's best-known double-act, presenters of TV documentaries, quiz shows and podcasts. 'Now, I look back and think, 'Wow, that took a lot of courage!'' Every summer throughout Filip's childhood, Lars, a school teacher, would drive the family in his orange Renault 4 to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera, a journey of 1,450 miles. 'He was such a Francophile that when France did nuclear tests in Polynesia in the 1980s, the local newspaper called and asked if he was going to stop teaching French and drinking French wine.' In 2008, after 40 years of teaching, Lars retired, aged 66. He had been looking forward to this new phase of life: he and his wife, Tiina, could now travel to France as often as they wished; it would be his troisième âge. It didn't turn out that way. Without his job, Lars lost his spark; the school had been his stage, and the performance was over. Although medical tests found nothing wrong physically, he took to spending his days slumped in his armchair, as if waiting for the end to come. Something had to be done. So Filip came up with a plan, a road trip to reinvigorate his father, destination: Beaulieu-sur-Mer. He tracked down a vintage Renault, identical to the old family car, and roped in Fredrik – as well as a tiny film crew, so that the nostalgic journey could be documented. Lars, then aged 80 and armed with a French dictionary and a big fat book about Charles de Gaulle, was installed in the passenger seat, with Filip taking the wheel, and long-legged Fredrik crammed into the back seat, and off they went. When the film of their adventure, The Last Journey, was released in Sweden last year, it quickly became Scandinavia's highest-grossing documentary of all time. Now, this funny, life-affirming film is coming to British cinemas, which is how I come to find myself in London's Soho Hotel, asking Filip and Fredrik how Lars is handling his late-life fame. 'He said, 'I wish I was a little bit younger, a bit less frail, so I could enjoy the success more,'' replies Filip. 'But he gets so many lovely letters and emails from people who've seen the film, and Facebook messages from ex-students. I think he loves it.' There were points in the filming when this happy ending seemed far from assured. Only a couple of days into the journey, in Malmö, Lars fell, cracking a bone in his leg and requiring hospitalisation: it looked as if the whole trip was off. Instead, Filip and Fredrik decided to drive the ancient Renault ('Europe's most overtaken car', as Fredrik calls it) across Denmark, Germany and Belgium, where they were reunited with Lars, who had travelled there by train with Tiina, after being discharged from hospital. The documentary captures the playful, staged moment when the two friends plant Lars behind the wheel and push the Renault 4 over the border into France, a smile of sheer delight breaking across his face. His troisième âge had begun. 'Conventionally, you're not supposed to stage stuff in a documentary,' says Filip, who resists the idea that non-fiction films should maintain a po-faced, unmanipulated, 'fly-on-the-wall aesthetic'. Fredrik tells a story about the great German director Werner Herzog giving a talk to a class of film students. After one of them asked him if he'd ever staged something in any of his documentaries, 'Herzog said, 'Everyone who thinks a documentary needs to be straight up and fly-on-the-wall, raise your hand.' And everybody raised their hands. Then he said, 'Happy New Year, losers!' and left the room.' In The Last Journey, we see Filip ask his father what he used to love most about France. Lars thinks for a minute. 'It was great to meet people who don't stop at stop signs,' he says. 'Every Frenchman is his own president.' He also mentions that he used to enjoy seeing how the French would argue in traffic, which prompts Fredrik to visit a local casting agency, hire a couple of actors and stage a minor road-rage incident for the unwitting Lars. The following day, Filip takes his father to a roadside café for lunch, while Fredrik hides around the corner, directing proceedings via a walkie-talkie. ('Car number one – go! Car number two – go!') One of the actors pulls up in front of the café, blocking the road with his car; when a second actor drives up, an argument breaks out that ends with someone getting slapped. Lars watches, entranced, mouth slightly open, from his ringside seat at the café. I ask Fredrik when they broke it to Lars that the whole scene had been orchestrated. 'He was at a screening, two weeks before the premiere,' he says, 'and I suddenly realised we'd forgotten to tell him. When he was watching it and realised it was a set-up, he just turned to me with a lovely smile and said, 'You bastards.'' Filip laughs. 'He's always been a good sport.' The French trip functions as what Fredrik calls a sort of 'reverse bucket list' for Lars; repeating the same experiences he'd already ticked off decades before. They stay in the apartment where the family always used to go, enjoying the same old view from its balcony, and take trips to all the familiar haunts: the cemetery at Sète where Lars's hero the singer-songwriter Georges Brassens is buried; the beach; the market; the posh restaurants, where Filip now has to help his frail father keep the food on his fork and raise his wine glass high enough to swallow. 'And, in the editing, we realised that these almost desperate attempts to recreate the past also said so much about what Filip wants out of this,' says Fredrik. 'It's a metaphor for what he is trying to do, to recreate what was before.' And this is perhaps the film's most poignant aspect: Filip's desperation for his elderly father to enjoy life as he used to causes Lars in turn to feel sad that he is no longer living up to his son's expectations, that he is somehow disappointing him. It is Filip, it seems, who is in denial about ageing, not Lars. That realisation lands with unexpected emotional force. The process of making The Last Journey also led Filip to question his father's long-held view of France. While the country was always a source of happiness for Lars, 'I sometimes think, does France deserve all this love? We screened the film in Paris the other night, and it went down well, but to the French, it's like, 'You don't have to tell us that our country's great; we know!' I love France, but I also detest that self-congratulatory aura that almost every Frenchman has.' 'They take it for granted,' adds Fredrik, before admitting, slightly sheepishly, that he owns a second home in France. 'I love the weather, but the people..? The local baker treats me like s--- every morning.' The Last Journey is not the first time that Filip has turned the camera on his family. In 2007, he and Fredrik made an acclaimed series about Filip's sister Linda, who has a learning disability: I en annan del av Köping (In another part of Köping), which ran for four seasons. 'She was living in a home with three male friends, also learning disabled, and when you hung out with them, they were so funny, it was almost like Seinfeld,' Filip tells me. 'The first episode opened with her saying, 'Uh-oh, I've been unfaithful again...' and that set the tone for the series. It was not what people would expect.' The show was so popular that, for a while, Linda became a national celebrity. 'At one point, she was voted 'Woman of the Year' in Sweden. Ahead of the queen! 'For some reason, I tend to explore my family and my hometown in our work – it must be a kind of therapy, or a way of dealing with weirdness,' he says. 'But I have said to Fred, 'By the way, whenever you want to do something about your family, I would be open to that...'' 'They're not charismatic enough!' replies Fredrik. 'That's the harsh truth. They're so low-key.' 'But there is a sort of inverted charisma vibe to your parents,' says Filip, kindly. 'You'd have to dig really, really deep,' concedes Fredrik. When The Last Journey came out in Scandinavia, the scale of its success took both men by surprise. 'It had more admissions than Dune: Part Two, which had a huge marketing budget,' points out Fredrik. 'God, we're so boastful. There have been several successful documentaries in Sweden in recent years: one about the ex-prime minister Olof Palme; one about Ingrid Bergman; one about the footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović. And one is about a teacher from a small town: my dad. He beat them all.'
