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The winner of Los Angeles Film Festival 2015’s World Fiction Award, not to mention the Berlin Film Festival’s prestigious Crystal Bear, “Flocken (Flocking)” is an artful and deep, deep down disturbing movie about victim blaming and bullying as it’s been done since the dawn of human society, but in all its modern manifestations.
In a rural Swedish meatpacking community, 14-year-old Jennifer (compelling newcomer Fatime Azemi) interrupts a slaughterhouse wedding reception with a grief-powered drunken display. She’s soon complaining to authorities that popular classmate Alexander (John Risto) assaulted her in a school restroom. The boy isn’t saying much about the accusation or anything else, except when the police make him, but his mom refuses to believe an ounce of it.
Tremulous but determined, Jennifer does not back down. In no time the slut-shaming texts start flying. Practically the whole village — from her former school friends to the handsy church pastor — turn against Jennifer, her kind of blowsy mother and her soccer star little sister. Even mom’s boyfriend, a kind heart who lets Jennifer bond with his horse, is hunting buddies with a bunch of her oppressors (including young Alex), and is beaten, brow- and otherwise, into having second thoughts.
Beata Gardeler’s beautifully composed and paced film is no fun night at the movies. It’s hardly Bergman either, but while it may not rise to the highest standards of Nordic intellectual rigor, it does quite accurately depict the particularly stern, voice-kept-down way Scandanavians have of letting people know when they’re unhappy with them.
As for a study of sex hysterical mob mentality from that part of the world, “Flocken” has it all over the Danish child molester freakout “The Hunt” from a few years ago. This one is very much about the personal damage wreaked on all involved when social unity dictates that some girls just aren’t worth protecting. Or believing. Or even listening to, because just look what happens when you do…
It’s a great film to get angry with.
For more movie reviews from the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival, click here.
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