You, The Living

The middle installment in Andersson's trilogy features an even wider, stranger cast of characters.

When grasping for forebears to help describe Andersson’s work, people often reach beyond cinema to art (Grosz, Dix, Matisse) or literature (Kafka, Beckett). We’d like to think of it as a quotation from the Monster Mash, but the title of this middle entry in the trilogy is drawn from Goethe: “Be pleased, you living one, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot.”

The cast is more varied this time and there are more laughs to be had, particularly from the embattled sousaphonist reduced to playing funerals. The players are non-professionals, many of them encountered by the director on the street (“I call them characters instead of actors”), and although they’re often depicted as deluded or daft it’s difficult to hold them at an amusing distance; they are clearly a distorted version of ourselves.

A Roy Andersson pass is also available for £25. This bundle gives access to all of Andersson's 'living' trilogy as well as a screening of his shorts and commercials.