Do you remember how much of a difference a few months in the summer made when you were a kid?
The Swedish director Eric Green Petersson will help you recall in his 2010 short film Holger & Vilde. The film features a bitter-sweet story about friendship, growing up, first love and everything in between. Holger and Vilde are best of friends, which makes them inseparable.
When the summer holidays begin, they have to split, but they promise each other they’ll reunite as soon as possible. While on their own, they face different situations and meet new people, so they don’t fully realize how much they have changed during their separation …
The film is a real delight with its bright scenes, soft focus and close-ups of the young protagonists. The nervousness and confusion of youth are immaculately captured on camera to associate with the character and get a real feel for their innocence and tenderness.
There are great cinematographic techniques utilized in the film that enhances its appeal, as does the time-lapse photography that adds a sense of magic to the scenes. Gentle guitars characterize the film’s main theme, composed by Bjorn Olsson, bringing a dreamlike atmosphere and melancholic feel.
The Coming-of-Age narrative of Holger & Vilde focuses on the beauty of friendships (especially those that can blossom into love), the shaping of one’s self-image, the gap between generations and last, but not least, the peer pressure to which kids (and adults alike) are subjected to at one time or another.
As one might expect from a Scandinavian film, the story is told quite realistically, including happenings in one’s rite-of-passage that movies released in other countries may choose to omit. That, and the parallel character development, increases the film’s appeal to audiences in their teens and pre-teens or to older viewers as a means of recalling their own childhood memories.
