Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell, absent from American screens for a quarter-century, and perhaps best remembered for the early-Seventies diptych of The Emigrants and The New Land, returns with another period piece, the period of pre-WWI, a period that appears to predate color, in an all-brown, almost sepia palette. The faithful Finnish wife of a violent drunken Swedish dockworker is a nice character, and her chaste relationship with a studio photographer who encourages and nurtures her “gift of seeing” is nice too. (Much more could have been done to illustrate the “gift.”) Troell’s heavy hand isn’t altogether crushing. Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt, Jesper Christensen. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
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