COURTESY OF MUSIC BOX FILMS
From the start of Hannes Holm’s fanciful character study A Man Called Ove, Sweden’s official submission for the foreign-language Oscar, it’s clear where things are going: The curmudgeon of the title is going to get a wake-up call. If the tone is more overtly sentimental, A Man Called Ove plays like a Swedish variation on Gran Torino—except the cars are Volvos and Saabs. Ove (Wallander star Rolf Lassgård, unrecognizable in a bald cap), a 59-year-old widower, has just been made redundant after 42 years at the same factory. If he was grumpy before, now he’s downright suicidal, but every time he tries to kill himself, one of his pesky neighbors interrupts him.