Little Otik

One of Roy Andersson's most successful films (not to be confused with Wes and Paul Thomas Anderson!) is about teenage love, just as tender, pure, and innocent as the theme itself. This film is often referred to as the Swedish Romeo and Juliet, although I believe it is about something else. The children are fine here, it's the adults that are lost. They are the ones who break the tragedy, they are the ones who have trapped themselves in a dead end, they are the ones who can't seem to be happy.

The children live their hidden, silent lives and handle sex education on their own. And there's really no one to turn to: relatives are either caricatured bourgeois or neurotic. And in general, they've gotten tangled up in their own lives, almost like Chekhovian characters.

For the children, everything works out virtuously and naturally. An empty apartment, a cassette tape player, alcohol from a flask, two modest glasses... In the morning, they enthusiastically jump on the bed, which is when the girl's aunt catches them.

Roy Andersson made «A Swedish Love Story» before finishing film school, when he himself was, of course, slightly older than his characters but not by much.