Veteran director Andersson took three years to carefully assemble this series of vignettes, where successive troubled characters such as harassed fathers or troubled hairdressers wander onto screen and express their hopes and fears, frequently in the form of describing their dreams, which are then played out in full. A rare balance is struck in places between the pathetic and the hilarious, the barrier between the two extremes made more fragile by a framing technique that strips the characters bare - there are only prolonged static long shots, so effectively each piece works as a stage soliloquy.
Somewhat stereotypically for a Swedish view on dreams, You, the Living is also dourly heavy-handed at times, but there's a lot of food for thought here nevertheless.
7/10
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