Movie Number 13 of 2025
The Movie: The Last Journey
The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens
Runtime: 90 minutes
Stars: 4.5
In limited release.
I'm going to be recommending this film to everybody, especially if you have aging parents. I remember seeing the ads for this at the cinema and it went high up on my list of things to see. Then I hear it was Sweden's entry in the International Film category at the Academy Awards. Yep. I see why this is the case.
This film didn't let me down. It's a gorgeous little documentary. Yes, a documentary. It's absolutely gorgeous.
This is ostensibly a road movie. Filip Hammar is a well-known Swedish broadcaster, who has been all over the Swedish media with his mate Fredrik Wikingsson for a couple of decades. At the start of the film, Filip is very worried about his father, a once jovial and engaged man who used to teach French at the local high school in Koping, a satellite town just out of Stockholm in Sweden. After retirement, he appears to have blended in with his armchair and lost his will to live. They get him tested for dementia and can't find too much wrong with him.
In an effort to give Dad/Lars a bit of life back, Filip, along with his best mate Fredrik, embark on a journey with Dad to recapture his love of life. A complete Francophile, Lars loves everything French. As a family, they would holiday in a town called Beaulieu-sur-Mer, on the Mediterranean, near the Italian border.
Filip wants to recapture the joy that his father had being in his most favourite place in the world. So they start to plan this trip, with the blessing of his mother, Tiina, who is doing a lot better in the aging stakes.
And the journey starts. And there are some false starts, but they finally get on their way. They drive the same car that they took on holiday - and ancient orange Renault 4 (The car the family took to France when Filip was a child), complete with gears on the stick and afterthought seatbelts. Very much like the kombi van in Little Miss Sunshine, the car has a personality of its own.
And the two men go about recreating a best of reel of Lars and the family on holiday, from the meals they ate, to the music he loved, to old friends and other experiences in which Lars used to revel.
This is not only a film about aging, which brings some of the more heart-rending moment. If you have aging parents, or have watched your own parents with theirs, you'll get the drift. Aging can be cruel. It's about family, memory, joy and nostalgia. There are some very fully moments in the film, as well as others that will have you reaching for the tissue box. What you take away from these moments is that Lars is a very decent, very loved man, even if he can't see it.
And yes, the film is in Swedish, with a smattering of French and English thrown in for good measure. The subtitles are good
This film is wonderful. Heart-warming, funny, eye opening, kind, hopeful and true. Go see it. Take a couple of tissues. Thank me later.
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