Waltz for Monica (2013)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Instant Favorite.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

very minor spoiler at the very end of this review... It seems like Sweden was under the spell of Monika Z for a few decades. Here in the USA, we do not know her. Yet her story is so familiar: beautiful girl from a modest background. Big hopes and disarming talent. Poised for major discovery and stardom...with hopes foiled and rekindled many times along the way. Yet we never grow tired of the story, do we? Because every ending is different perhaps. This movie tells the tale in a more modest way than an American film would. It does not try to razzle dazzle us with Hollywood-style production numbers. It focuses more on Monika navigating between artistic impulse and fame obsession and the kaleidoscope of repercussions. True narcissists are rarely redeemed by self awareness or minor tragedies.With that in mind, I was kept in suspense wondering whether Monika suffered from a deep incurable personality disorder or a long bout of reversible blind ambition. I was not disappointed with the cinematic build-up to the final reveal. I know Danish, and watched the movie in Swedish with Danish subtitles on Danish public TV. Some of the nudity may have been cut, but I did not find anything offensive or describable as "full frontal" as another reviewer from Norway has mentioned. I only wish this movie had a full soundtrack of Edda Magnusson singing Monika Z classics. Her voice is enchanting. I like her renditions of Swedish jazz classics even better than the Monika Z samples I have heard on youtube. I gave the movie 10 stars, because rarely do I want to watch a movie twice, and now I plan to watch it for a third time in fact! The movie's only minor flaw was the bar scene with Ella Fitzgerald. The exchange was not very convincing to my mind. The actress who played the great EF was perhaps too strident. I would have expected a more reserved, almost indifferent reaction. So maybe the blame is also on the lines written. So to be precise, I would say 9 1/2 stars. Enjoy!

Well, this film does abuse the character of Monicas father as well as others.If one have to make evil portraits, do not use real persons names.And, there was no bus-service from Hagfors to Stockholm, she would take the train to Karlstad, and the express-train from there to Stockholm.I also doubt the New York episode about Negroes and blondes.Anachronistic and filled with errors. Also have a hard believing that Hagfors did not have an automatic telephone exchange in 1960.But the film is well played, lovely songs, nice portraits of some other personalities, it also contains full frontal nudity and nice Stockholm scenes. Why it is I gave it a 6.

Danish screenwriter and director Per Fly's sixth feature film which he co-wrote with Swedish author and screenwriter Peter Birro, is freely based on the life of a Swedish 20th and 21st century singer and actress named Monica Zetterlund (1937-2005). It premiered at the 7th Way Out West Music Festival in Sweden in 2013, was screened in the Nordic Focus section at the 41st Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund in 2013, was shot on locations in Sweden and USA and is a Sweden-Denmark co-production which was produced by Swedish producer Lena Rehnberg. It tells the story about a 23-year-old telephone operator, jazz singer and mother named Monica who lives in a town called Hagfors in Sweden with her parents named Bengt and Greta Nilsson and her 5-year-old daughter named Eva-Lena, and who during a winter in 1960 is contacted by an English jazz pianist named Leonard Feather who invites her to New York, USA. Distinctly and engagingly directed by Nordic filmmaker Per Fly, this finely paced and densely biographical tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the main character's point of view, draws a humane and involving portrayal of an inspirited woman's relationship with her father, her daughter, her friend named Marika, a filmmaker named Vilgot Sjöman and a jazz musician named Sture Åkerberg. While notable for its naturalistic, variegated and atmospheric milieu depictions, reverent cinematography by Danish cinematographer Eric Kress, production design by Swedish production designer and costume designer Josefin Åsberg, costume design by costume designer Kicki Ilander and use of sound, colors and light, this character-driven and narrative-driven story about a person who grew up in a working-class family in Sweden in the 20th century and who struggled to make her father see that her persistent engagement in her music career wasn't all in vain, depicts a reflective study of character and contains a great and timely score by Swedish composer Peter Nordahl. This somewhat historic, at times charmingly romantic and heart-shaped drama which is set in Sweden and in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and which gracefully reconstructs and reminiscences poignant scenes in the life of a renowned artist, daughter and sister who was both criticized and praised in her homeland and discovered by American musicians she admired, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, singing by Edda Magnason, striking scenes between Monica and her father, lyrics sung in Swedish by Monica : "I walk around in my Pompeii amongst ruins…" and the heartfelt acting performances by Swedish singer and actress Edda Magnason in her debut feature film role and Swedish actors Sverrir Gudnason and Kjell Bergqvist. A revering, life-affirming and acclaiming narrative feature which gained, among several other awards, the Nordic Film Award Haugesund at the 41st Norwegian Film Festival Haugesund in 2013.

Let's first make clear that Edda Magnason is fantastic as Monica Zetterlund, an icon in Swedish jazz music and entertainment. Not at least when she sings. It's almost scary.But the script about her life outside stage is a melodrama on at best average level. The chronology is strange, 15 years pass and her daughter doesn't get older and nothing new is put to the common movie myth about the self-burning artist and her soul.We're quite in love with the early 60s now. Both we who were where and the rest of us. Which doesn't mean we're so interested in this way of romanticizing it in this way, even the destructiveness it kept