Are We Lost Forever *** (2020, Björn Elgerd, Jonathan Andersson, Micki Stoltt, Nemanja Stojanovic) – Classic Movie Review 12,375

Writer-director David Färdmar’s Swedish 2020 gay intimate relationship drama film Are We Lost Forever focuses sharply on a painful breakup. It starts the same way the 2021 Italian film Mascarpone begins, with a long-term lover dumping his partner, but that leads to laughter, and this, possibly because it is Swedish, leads to tears, doom and gloom.

One morning after three years, during one fateful discussion in bed, it is over for Swedish guys Hampus (Jonathan Andersson) and Adrian (Björn Elgerd), who is devastated when Hampus tells him he is breaking up with him and moving out of their apartment, even insisting on taking half the bed and TV with him!

But is it really all over, or is there a way of Adrian somehow getting Hampus back? It seems that Adrian is hard work, too intense, too controlly, too over-powering, leading to a destructive relationship that gradually disintegrated over the previous six months, and eventually he is too sad trying to survive without the love of his life.

Gothenburg man David Färdmar makes his feature film debut as writer-director with a poignant bitter-sweet portrayal of the painful time after the end of a long relationship when life somehow has to start over and the two ex-partners are struggling to renew but keep contacting each other or bumping into each other. For some while, they can hardly bear to leave each other alone and be apart, and loving meetings occur.

They were kind of made for each other, in so many ways, but it just hasn’t worked out. Adrian, though obsessed with Hampus, has been unfaithful to him, but the main issue is that he is aloof and withholding. He loves but he doesn’t seem loving.

In a while, both men eventually find somebody new (Adrian even picks someone who looks like Hampus), and, in one of the film’s key scenes, the four have dinner together. It all seems so civilised, and yet…

David Färdmar’s emotionally powerful, frank, raw, and sometimes explicit gay intimate relationship drama Are We Lost Forever (2020) is quite painful and upsetting but it is rewarding and revealing to watch. It is haunting and truly, madly deeply sad, and stays in the mind long, long after the film is over. The acting is also intimate and minimalist. We get close up to the characters, and the actors convey the various moments of agony and ecstasy bravely and rawly. Truth is stamped all over the film.

For a long time sympathy is all with the more open Hampus (Jonathan Andersson) but much later Björn Elgerd pulls you over to Adrian’s side after he reveals his vulnerabilities, and Hampus shows his harder edges. So it is subtle too. You want everyone to be happy here, and there is a chance, but there’s a nagging doubt that that will actually be the case. People may be miserable in Sweden, but they do have a great lifestyle, and are miserable in luxury, comfort and style. It’s good to share their emotional agonies.

It is set and shot in Gothenburg, Sweden.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,375

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