Film Review – Patrik 1.5

I fell in love with this movie after seeing it at AFM last year. I saw it again last night and loved it just as much.

This is one movie that just grows on you and that can be watched multiple times.

*** Warning Contains Spoilers***

Patrik 1.5

This is the story of Göran and Sven, a gay Swedish couple who want to adopt a child.  They have recently married and move into a nice neighborhood with the white picket fence and constant garden parties. After a long wait and many hurdles they are finally given clearance by Social Services and are awaiting the arrival of their baby boy Patrik. Well thanks to a mix up at the social service office Patrik is not 1.5 but rather a 15 year old homophobe with a criminal record and a messed up past.

Göran (the more sensitive of the two) refuses to send Patrik back to the orphanage and decides to keep him until the find him a family to take him in. This drives a wedge between the couple and forces their separation. When Sven moves out, Göran and Patrik bond and get past their differences and Patrik begins to accept those different from him.

Just when things begin to look up for them and Göran is going to adopt Patrik, a family is found that is willing to take him in. Before he goes he helps Göran get Sven back.

Patrik comes to visit them one day and playfully tells them about his new family but that they don’t have a dog (something he had told Göran he wanted), Sven surprises us by saying that they had been discussing getting a dog and Patrik is theirs!

The movie raises issues of intolerance and homophobia without beating you over the head with them.  You see that although Sven and Goran live in a society that allows them to marry, their neighbors shun them (one father even threatens to kill Göran if he ever touches his kid again.. Göran is a doctor), and kids vandalize their property and call them “homos”.  Director Ella Lemhagen does a great job of telling a story without being preachy.

I plan on adding this movie to my DVD collection because it was just that good!