Starring: Filip Hammar, Fredrik Wikingsson Lars Hammar and Tiina Hammar
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 95 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Renowned Swedish TV-duo Filip and Fredrik embark on a trip to France, aiming to rekindle the zest for life of Filip’s father.
The journey is, in fact, from Sweden to the French Riviera. And the passenger for the last journey is a retired teacher much admired by his students, now in old age. His son thinks that he is too settled, has lost his spark and needs some kind of stimulation. Hence the journey, back to his favourite part of France, back into reliving some of his happy past.
The style of the film is docudrama. The characters are real/actual indicating documentary. But the narrative moves like a fiction film.
Many audiences have responded well and the film has been a hit in Sweden. But, for audiences outside Sweden, the question lurks all the way through who is this son, what is his background, who is this best friend who accompanies them on the trip . . .? The answer is they are two of Sweden’s most famous television personalities. (An Australian audience will almost automatically think of Hamish and Andy.) So, the filmmakers, are taking it for granted that the audiences know who they are and are happily along for the ride.
The non-Swedish audiences, too, are prepared to go along for the ride, and the audience is especially interested in Lars Hammar, the father. Fortunately for this film, the family took a lot of footage on past holidays and travels. And we see the farewell to Lars as he teaches his last class, goes into retirement.
His son Filip finds the family’s old Renault and coaxes, persuades and cajoles his father into getting out of his old chair and going on the trip. It almost doesn’t happen when almost immediately Lars has to go to hospital. But, out of hospital, with the help of map animations indicating the route of the journey, the audience is happy to get into the car and travel through Belgium, take a detour to the memorial of singer-writer, Jacques Brel, Lars’s favourite, then through the French countryside and, eventually, to the coastal town of Beaulieu.
Several times, the two men contrive past situations to jog the memory of Lars, to tell a story about Harry Belafonte that he often told sitting in a cafe, his comment about French drivers not stopping at red lights and getting out to squabble, the two men sitting up the exact old situations – and, happily for them as well, Lars tells the story and makes the comments.
Response to the film will depend on one’s age. This reviewer writing from the perspective of being a year younger than Lars, the experience of ageing. Audiences who have looked after their parents, especially in care, reflecting on how they would have handled the situation, whether their parent would want to go on the trip or not. One of the reflections on the film is that Filip, with smiles and love for his father, is really pushing him, forcing him along the way and sometimes the suspicion, perhaps unworthy, that so much of the last journey is very much for Filip’s benefit.
The film invites us to happily go along for the ride.
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