a direct translation from the original Swedish

Film On to the Swedish film sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire. Leaving aside the sexual content which some viewers might still find disturbing, with the exception of one particularly titillating scene, here's what I thought went right, or at least what I thought directly after watching it this afternoon:

#1: Naomi Rapace who plays "goth" computer hacker Lisbeth is still a star in the making and this film is probably more entertaining because it’s her story right the way through, even if that story is a Swedish version of The Fugitive. The sense of danger which accompanies her presence in most scenes raises the film beyond its more obvious tv origins. As the revelations about Lisbeth’s past tumble out, it makes her performance across the two films even more impressive since it was all implicit in performance in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

#2: The title makes better sense this time (because it’s a direct translation from the original Swedish) and there’s a scene were we can see the visceral nature of fire as the camera lingers on a blaze, it’s given the symbolic importance that a director like Vincent Ward or Cédric Klapisch would be pleased with. Of course, in a crime thriller such symbolism recedes in importance, but this is a “film” which is happier in its own skin as a noir b-movie (useful coincidences and emphatic intercutting included) unlike the first piece which took material which seemed better suited to this style and approached it like, well, a truly evil Midsummer Murders.

#3: It’s just the right length as a "film" and it's less obvious as to where the extra material had been cut out for the running time. The shift from the first to the second episode of the original television version is less obvious and my guess is that what we have here is the lions share of the second with much of the time spent by a young journalist in researching his article and the police side of an investigation were both casualties. It also ends rather abruptly in a nice 70s manner, which suggests it has lost a wrap up scene.

#4: It's much better structured at least in terms of character. By keeping the two leads apart for the whole film, it makes each of them seem as prominent as the other, though obviously Blomkvist spends most of his time filling in back story and explaining some of Lisbeth’s actions so actually on this occasion Lisbeth keeps most of her narrative agency. The Empire Strikes Back looms large for various reasons. It also just about passes The Bechdel Test unless there’s a special sub-clause rooted in the queer theory branch of film studies.

#5: It's better structured its story development, with most information hard fought for and with a sense of peril. Over and over again when the investigation reaches a stand-still, Lisbeth mostly leaves the comfort of cyberspace and has to physically follow the trail of information geographically. It shares plenty of elements with the Sandra Bullock headliner The Net, though Lisbeth is far more pro-active in hitting against the force that done wrong her.

#6: It’ll be interesting to see how the film translates as a US remake, since it’s difficult to see Daniel Craig spending quite so much time sitting around looking at files and chatting with witnesses. I can see at least one character whose participation will be reduced to give Craig one decent action sequence since that’s what the audience will be expecting; the Swedish versions are still generally perceived to be art house, whereas the US version is very much a Hollywood genre production.

I appreciate that this is another lazy list and not some fully formed film criticism, but unlike Philip French who as ever manages to spoil the first three quarters of the run time in the space of a paragraph (and mention EM Forster), I’ve decided that it’s the kind of work which needs to be experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible. I’ve probably given too much away already. Reading through the comments and reviews elsewhere, there’s as wide a spectrum of opinion for this as Inception from the very kind to the downright hostile. Though the praise for Naomi Rapace is pretty universal.

The next film is out in November followed presumably by another blu-ray. After that, the smart marketing idea would be for a release of the longer Swedish Millenium television series with English subtitles either for broadcast on BBC Four or the home market or both. Certainly they’re the version I’ll be waiting for, to see if the lesions in narrative of the first film are explained and what the extra hours runtime in the second is filled with. Like the six-hour version of Das Boot, the two can exist separately; but I suspect that once I’ve seen the longer version, these cinema editions will seem less important somehow.