In 1959 Sweden, young Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) lives with his dying mother and his nasty older brother. He survives all of life's knocks by comparing himself to those who are worse off--such as Laika, the little Russian space dog who was rocketed to his death and had nothing to say in the matter. Ingemar begins to identify with Laika more and more as his mother's health deteriorates, at times dropping to all fours and baying at the moon. When his mother is advised to get some peace and quiet away from her children, Ingemar is sent to live with his loveable uncle and aunt. For the first time, the boy is surrounded by relatives and classmates who pose no threat and who genuinely like him. He even has a sexual awakening. When his mother dies, he no longer rationalizes his misfortunes by comparing himself to those less fortunate; from now on, he can conjure up pleasant memories of his summer away from home to sustain him through the hard times. My Life as a Dog (Mitt Liv Som Hund) is based on the autobiographical novel by Reidar Jonsson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
liked it.
It's no mistake that the main character in
Mitt Luv Som Hund (1985) is named Ingemar Johansson: the film is set in the same year, 1959, that a Swedish boxer of the same name won the world heavyweight champion title from Floyd Patterson. Like his namesake, the film's fictional boy named Ingemar Johansson (Anton Glanzelius) is also a scrappy fighter, both literally and metaphorically. Ingemar climbs into the ring to learn boxing (only to be resoundingly beaten by a girl and thus experience his first sexual impulses) but his primary struggles are with poverty, neglect and abuse, challenges he faces by using his vivid imagination. Rather than being off-putting, the humorous, almost nostalgic tone of
Mitt Luv Som Hund blends surprisingly well with the film's frank, dark story and situations, leaving a disquieting but simultaneously funny impression, a tribute to the skill with which the film is rendered by director Lasse Hallstrom. One of the most acclaimed films of 1985 and a success with underdog-loving American audiences at urban art house venues,
Mitt Liv Som Hund won Best Foreign Language Film awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Golden Globes, as well as earning Oscar nominations for the script and Hallstrom. Its success propelled the largely unknown Swedish director to international prominence, after over a decade as a filmmaker of romantic comedies and one concert film, ABBA: The Movie (1977). The comedy-drama fit snugly into Hallstrom's preferred type of material, which typically dealt with social iconoclasts struggling to achieve happiness in spite of their eccentricities which, as fondly depicted by the director, are almost always much less bizarre than those of their "normal" peers. Hallstrom's deft and unsentimental touch continued to serve him well as he capitalized on the success of
Mitt Luv Som Hund by directing several similarly-themed Hollywood pictures such as
Once Around (1991),
What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and
The Cider House Rules (1999). (The latter featured a main character and several cute young orphan boys who could've been Ingemar's American cousins.) The English language translation of
Mitt Luv Som Hund,
My Life as a Dog, was also the title of a short-lived American television series spin-off of the film in the 1990s. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide