Mitt liv som hund [My Life as a Dog] (1985)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) Meh. Big meh. Visible-from-orbit meh. I’m not big on slice-of-life movies in the first place, so it’s hardly surprising that I would have an unimpressed reaction to My Life as a Dog. Taking us back to late-1950s rural Sweden, it’s a film that follows a young boy as he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle while his mother faces a terminal illness. New friends, eccentric characters, grief and obsession about the fate of Laika (sent in orbit without ways of making it back on Earth) are the stuff that the film is made of. Clearly a labour of nostalgia from writer-director Lasse Hallström (who parlayed the film’s unexpected American success into a Hollywood career), the film is amiable, wistful, funny and often far more imaginative than you’d expect. Rather than harp on how I didn’t care all that much for the result, I‘ll let you decide whether this is the kind of film that would interest you, and act accordingly.