Behind Blue Skies

MOVIE #1,128 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.29.23 I ran out of recent-ish “sky” movies for the September-long “sky”-themed TWO FOR TUESDAYS so I had to go digging. Completely stumbled on this by random and am very glad I did. The only issue was I found a pretty bad version uploaded to Daily Motion lol and whoever handled the hardcoded English subs, well (see below)…

It was pretty funny watching it with this ESL-style notation. I thought it would be an issue at first but you absolutely get the gist of every scene even if the translation isn’t close to 100% ‘correct’. Anyway, moving on…

This Swedish coming-of-age crime story was made by Hannes Holmes who would go onto make a trilogy of family comedies in the early 2010s right after this (The Anderssons in Greece, The Anderssons Hit the Road, and The Anderssons Rock the Mountains) before helming the original A Man Called Otto (the super cheesy looking Tom Hanks film that came out last year). That movie, A Man Called Ove, was actually nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. Needless to say, he’s got a super strange looking filmography.

Starting off with an odd X-rated version of a sex joke straight out of American Pie, things settle down quickly, as Behind Blue Skies is actually a really thoughtful period piece about the son of an alcoholic finding his way in the world. One of the younger Skarsgård brood (Bill) stars alongside a local gangster (Peter Dalle) who’s masquerading as the manager of an upscale sailing club. The latter becomes a father figure as he enters a life of crime. But it’s not a morality play and these aren’t one-dimensional characters. There’s a really lovely nuance here both in the performances and the screenplay which elevates it above similar genre schlock. I definitely would recommend it.

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Behind Blue Skies (Swedish: Himlen är oskyldigt blå) is a 2010 Swedish drama film directed by Hannes Holm. It was released on September 10, 2010.