Adapted from Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s book of the same name, the film En Man Som Heter Ove (2015), A Man Called Ove, with Rolf Lassgård in the leading role, is about a grumpy, stubborn, old man who does not like the concept of lunch, hates Volvo cars, gets mad at everyone and anyone, trying to commit suicide in his impeccable suit and failing multiple times.
Ove is a man who lost his wife no more than a year ago, living in the same house he used to live with his late wife Sonja. He keeps things around just the way they were, keeping the memory of his wife alive. He definitely does not get along with his neighbors, tries to keep the order in their modest gated community and occasionally hisses at the neighborhood cat. When he realizes he is about to be fired, he quits and decides to join his wife, only to be interrupted by the family moving in across his place. The story unravels as the mother of this family lures him out of his cocoon of loneliness and he finds himself helping people even if he does not want to admit that he does and the audience learns about his past during his failed suicide attempts.
Looking like a hybrid of Up and Gran Torino, applying the trope of a grumpy old man of the neighborhood, the film nominated for Academy Awards and won several other awards as well as the approval of audience and the critics.
En Man Som Heter Ove is the story of a man who lost everyone he loved, the story of depression and loneliness. It is the story of an individual in a community who eventually accepts the love and help he deprived himself of.
