Swedish Auto

Reviewed by Rich Drees

     A lugubriously-paced melodrama that starts off promising, Swedish Auto - as cheap as it use to use this metaphor - quickly runs out of gas, rolls to a dead stop at the side of the road and stays there for the rest of the film’s dreary runtime.

     Lukas Haas is the quiet auto mechanic Carter. Over the course of the film we learn that as a boy he was the only survivor of a car crash that killed his entire family and that is why he doesn’t own a car. Why he chooses a career as an auto mechanic, a job at which he excels at, is never explained. Carter is an introvert with no friends. In the evenings, he often eavesdrops on the rehearsals of a local university’s star violinist, though his actions are never quite presented as stalker-ish. But Carter quickly goes from voyeur to voyeuee when he discovers that he is being observed by Darla (January Jones), a waitress at the local greasy-spoon diner where Clark and his co-workers often have lunch.

     But what starts off as an interesting drama about damaged souls in need of each other for support never materializes its potential. The film’s washed-out cinematography deadens what little life the performers bring to their roles. We see Carter and Darla start to develop a relationship, but we never actually feel that they are. The characters seem to be sleepwalking, never quite seeming connected with the events they are participating in. Haas shades his performance just enough to keep it from being one-note, but one and a half notes do not a symphony make.

     The cast can’t take the whole blame for the film though. Director Derek Sieg’s screenplay is as culpable for the film’s failure. We see the characters go through the motions of the plot but with little real investment or insight into their emotional states. When Carter tells Darla that he is in love with the violinist he has been following instead of just admiring her musical talent as he previously claimed, the revelation seems unprovoked and totally unestablished by what has gone before. The complications in Darla’s home life see to be overkill, as if Sieg doesn’t have enough confidence to be adequate obstacles to overcome.