Glancing at the cast, my expectations were rightly sky-high, considering this film is a who's who of famous Swedish actors of the early 2000s. Talented director Colin Nutley has somewhat of a reputation of mixing very good films with complete disasters, and has also been subject to criticism because of his obvious nepotism by constantly casting his wife, Helena Bergström, in virtually all of his movies.
Naturally she is cast here as well, together with Sweden's acting elite. The performances are very strong throughout, I would like to single out the performances of Lena Endre, Mikael Persbrandt, Peter Haber, Suzanne Reuter and Marika Lagercrantz as a notch above the rest. The rest of the cast performs admirably as well, and the casting really works.
The main problem is the terrible source material. Since there are so many characters, there needs to be some element holding it all together, but it is lacking and it shows in a painful way, as the story lacks focus. Though some of the characters feel interesting and have a certain depth, the movie still feels superficial, and that's strange for a two-hour-movie. In addition to that, too many of the characters are hard to like, and it is hard to really connect. What saves the movie somewhat is the superb quality of the acting, but still it is not nice to see such talented actors being so sadly let down by the material.
