Stream It Or Skip It?

The rich are once again the main dinner course of An Honest Life (now on Netflix), Swedish thriller that also doubles as a coming-of-age drama. Filmmaker Mikael Marcimain – previous feature: goofy English-language thriller Horizon Line – helms this story of a blank-slate law-school student who falls in with a group of unsavories and prompts us to wonder if Saltburn is going to be the new benchmark for movies of this ilk, for better or worse. The trend points to a potential food shortage in the film biz, as heavily privileged people are being devoured at such an alarming rate, movie characters may have to settle for, I dunno, eggs for breakfast and chicken parm for dinner instead of the usual country-clubber cacciatore. 

The Gist: There’s a cold open here in which our protag, Simon (Simon Loof), finds himself suddenly pressured into stealing about 100 grand worth of fancy-ass watches. He grabs ’em and we jump to SEVEN WEEKS EARLIER, when his life was at a more recognizable pivot point: The first day of school. He’s studying law at Lund University, but he secretly wants to be a writer. He journals and journals and journals, which means we’re going to hear a decent amount of first-person voiceover in this movie. Simon’s barely off the train before he’s bleeding – it won’t be the first time either – as he wanders by a violent protest-turned-riot that finds him maced by a cop but rescued by a ski-masked individual who, along with a cadre of thieves, had been using the commotion as cover to rob a jewelry store. Excitement! Is this preferable to the usual first-day-on-campus awkward icebreaker events? Possibly!

Not that Simon is staying on campus. He’s renting a room he can barely afford, in a sprawling flat occupied by a pair of megadouche jerkwads who look like they had private tennis lessons in the womb. Daddy owns the apartment, of course. Why do they bother to rent out a room? Do they really need the money? I have no answer to that, but the arrangement allows the movie to set up a major class rift as the jerkwads treat Simon like The Help, allowing him to attend their fancy dinner gathering (“Wear a white shirt and a jacket”) as long as he keeps their champagne flutes from getting dry. Why does he agree to be subjugated like this? I have no answer to that either, but the implication is, Simon has no identity of his own and is vulnerable to influence, and also, the movie shows little interest in being thematically subtle.

Speaking of “vulnerable to influence.” Simon is bored by his studies and bored even more by a study buddy who has all the personality and verve of aging celery. So once again Max (Nora Rios) appears in his life-slash-the-narrative, and we don’t even need the well-duh flashback shot to realize that she’s Simon’s ski-masked savior. Here’s yer voiceover, Simon: The dame slid back into my life like butter off a big ol’ cob of corn. She was succulent. Resistance was futile. It seems she got a whiff of Simon’s aimless discontent, which functions like pheromones to anarchists who live a weirdly bohemian existence in an old brick mansion owned by a former professor who encourages their extralegal behavior in order to maintain his lifestyle and bolster his anything-goes philosophies. They’re just “misfits trying to get by,” Max explains before kissing him and then, surprise, setting him up to snatch 100 grand worth of fancy-ass watches, which he does, possibly because he’s bored, possibly because he wants her to kiss him again, probably both. This is without a doubt a precarious development, but hey, at least Simon has the confidence to stand up for himself against the moneyguys’ sneering condescension. Grand larceny 1, assertiveness training 0.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Iggy Pop needle drops, drug use and cynically capricious protagonist brings to mind Trainspotting, albeit without the necksnapping visual dynamic. Was Marcimain’s pitch “Danny Boyle directs Saltburn”? If so, he falls short of its promise. (Note: I initially enjoyed Saltburn, but it feels increasingly yucky and ramshackle with every passing day.)

Performance Worth Watching: There’s a script out there that gives Loof and Rios the romantic volatility and depth of character to match their talent, but this isn’t quite it. 

Memorable Dialogue: Simon writes the movie’s likely thesis in his journal even though the movie doesn’t really follow it: “I thought I chose my path. I was so damn wrong.” 

Sex and Skin: Brief fanny exposure, sideboob during a couple of serviceable sex scenes.

Our Take: This movie needs a reminder that blank slates are people, too, not just puppets for plots bent on shouting loudly and semi-coherently about inequities as if soused on its own sauce. Simon’s motives are a frustrating muddle, his character boiled down to two primary traits: He’s discontent, and he wants to write. Early in the film he’s asked why he’s studying law instead of pounding words on the keyboard; he replies that he has nothing to write about, and An Honest Life is heretofore hellbent on giving him something to write about. Didn’t some wise smartyass once say you need to get your heart broken, bear witness to a rogue’s gallery opining generalities about societal woes and participate in smash-’n’-grabs that turn bloody before you have enough hair on your knuts to put words to paper? Hemingway, maybe?

Unless you’re in a David Lynch film – and this is absolutely not one – blank slates inevitably have backgrounds and upbringings, the luggage toted by college students from adolescence to adulthood. We don’t see much of this in Simon, who mostly functions as a projector screen for the movie’s attempts to tell us all kinds of stuff we already know as it wraps its law-studying straw man in an ironic cloak of lawlessness. If you’re feeling generous, you can use the movie as a foundation to extrapolate upon ideas about destiny and caste systems like a pretentious grad student, but frankly, it’s not worthy.

Marcimain keenly develops context and setting in a manner that makes us feel immersed and drawn ever closer to characters without much meat on their skeletons. And those characters work their way through predictable scenarios, staging toothless and bland anarchists-vs.-elites warfare, with empty-headed Simon neatly positioned in the uncertain median gray area. The film’s machinations are transparent, it struggles to find balance between universal ideas and necessary detail, and it rarely engages our emotions. Privilege is gross and the opposite is also icky, and the ends of the horseshoe of political ethics grow ever closer. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Our Call: Honestly, An Honest Life is derivative and mediocre. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.