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All Things Fair by Stephen Farber The mating of innocence and experience is an enduring, deep-seated, often scandalous fantasy. Swedish director Bo Widerberg's All Things Fair, about a 15-year-old boy, Stig, and his teacher, Viola, is controversial; though he's more the aggressor than the victim in their courtship, Stig looks young enough to raise fleeting thoughts of child molestation. The sex scenes are disarmingly frank but discreet; Widerberg avoids both prurience and hysteria. The two actors help to bring extra dimension to a touchy situation. The director's son, Johan Widerberg, is a believable mixture of child and man, and Marika Lagercrantz is every adolescent boy's fantasy of ripe womanhood. Their romance is treated with appropriate gravity; it has a searing impact on both of them. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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Widerberg, the director of Elvira Madigan and Adalen 31, is by now an extraordinarily accomplished filmmaker, and he handles family conflicts and classroom hijinks with equal deftness. Perhaps the most surprising relationship is the one that develops between Stig and his lover's husband a drunken salesman who awakens the boy's interest in classical music. In fact, their friendship is so lovingly rendered that it throws the second half of the film out of balance. Widerberg seems to have more sympathy for the husband than the wife, and when Stig tires of Viola, she becomes cruelly vindictive, like Mrs. Robinson. This cross-generational romance is definitely presented from a male point of view, failing to measure the full humanity of the older woman. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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