Guldbagge Awards: 'Clara Sola' and 'Pleasure' win

by Nathaniel R

Guldbagge Awards

Sweden's premiere movie awards, the Guldbagges, have been handed out. Though Sweden had chosen the sports drama Tigers to represent them in the current Oscar race instead, the Costa-Rican coproduction Clara Sola emerged as the big winner while Tigers went home empty-handed. (Clara Sola was an Oscar submission from Costa Rica but neither of those films made the current Oscar finals) The porn-themed festival hit Pleasure (still unreleased in the US, NEON has distribution rights) also did well at the Guldbagges. The nominations and winners are after the jump...

BEST FILM:
★ Clara Sola - a sexual awakening drama 
The Emigrants - a remake of the 1970s Oscar nominated classic
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World - a documentary about the boy in 1971's A Death in Venice who is now an old man
Pleasure - a drama about a young woman who wants to become a porn star
Tigers - based on the memoirs of a teenage soccer star who abandoned a star athlete career to focus on his own mental health

Clara Sola

BEST DIRECTOR:
★ Nathalie Álvarez -Clara Sola
Gorki Glaser-Müller -Children of the Enemy
Ronnie Sandahl -Tigers
Ninja Thyberg -Pleasure

BEST SCRIPT:
★ Clara Sola
Suedi 
Sabaya 
The Ape Star

The Ape Star is eligible at the Oscars for Best Animated Feature and currently streaming on Netflix. 

Jonas Karlsson in "A Christmas Tale"

BEST ACTOR:
Mustapha Aarab -JJ+E
Erik Enge -Tigers
★ Jonas Karlsson -A Christmas Tale
Gustaf Skarsgård -The Emigrants

Swedish cinema was apparently all about remakes this year. The Emigrants was a remake, A Christmas Tale is a live-action remake of a famous animated film in Sweden, and JJ+E is also a remake. 

Jonay Pineda Skallak in "JJ+E"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Filip Berg for Sagan -A Christmas Tale
Daniel Castañeda Rincón -Clara Sola 
Magnus Krepper -JJ+E
★ Jonay Pineda Skallak -JJ+E

For those who are curious, JJ+E, which is a remake of a 1996 Swedish film about an interracial teenage romance, is streaming on Netflix. Magnus Krepper plays the girl E's father and the winner, Jonay Skallak, plays the boy JJ's best friend.

Sofia Kappel in "Pleasure"

BEST ACTRESS:
Lisa Carlehed -The Emigrants
Wendy Chinchilla Araya -Clara Sola 
★ Sofia Kappel -Pleasure 
Cecilia Milocco -Knocking

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Sofia Helin -The Emigrants
Liv Mjönes -Tigers
Carla Sehn -A Christmas Tale
★ Jennie Silfverhjelm -A Christmas Tale

BEST EDITING:
Clara Sola
Pleasure 
★ The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Kören – en film om Tensta Gospel Choir 
Tigers
★ Clara Sola 

BEST SOUND DESIGN:
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
Knocking
★ Clara Sola 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
★ Children of the Enemy 
The Emigrants

Children of the Enemy is a documentary about a man's attempt to rescue his seven orphaned grandchildren in Syria

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
★ The Emigrants
A Christmas Tale
Clara Sola 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN:
The Emigrants
A Christmas Tale
★ Pleasure 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN:
Knocking
★ A Christmas Tale
Pleasure 

BEST MAKE-UP:
A Christmas Tale
Red Dot 
★ Pleasure 

"Sabaya"

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Children of the Enemy
Lena
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
★ Sabaya

Though The Most Beautiful Boy was nominated for Best Film, it lost its own Documentary Feature category. Awards season in all countries is filled with peculiar turns like that.  Sabaya, like Children of the Enemy, deals with the ongoing trauma of Syria's civil war, this time focusing on women being held by ISIS as sex slaves. Lena is about the famous Swedish actress Lena Nyman (I Am Curious Yellow and Autumn Sonata)

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
The Father (UK)
★ Flee (Denmark)
Nomadland (US)

Comments

[Finbar McBride]

No prizes can redeem the exploitive trash that is Pleasure. The film of a starlet seeking fame in the Los Angeles pornography industry repeatedly and purposefully crosses the line by highlighting degrading sequences of increasingly horrific sexual assaults. In one interminable scene, the woman is violated by two men who repeatedly spit in her face as they viciously rape her. The film implicitly questions if willing participation in such depictions has lasting psychological effects. As viewers we should be asking if being willing voyeurs to such depictions has lasting psychological effects.

[Leo Li]

Finbar - Thanks for your heads-up, I can delete Pleasure from my watchlist!

[Cláudio Alves]

Just wanted to say that I'm pleased about PLEASURE's success. I consider it one of the best-unreleased films of 2021, a powerful meditation on consent and exploitation. It repudiates moralistic demonizations of sex work while also illuminating the misogynistic structures of abuse within the porn industry. A BDSM shoot with a woman director shows there's a right way to do these things. At the same time, a focus on female camaraderie offers a sense of community often erased in stories that pertain to portray this milieu. I've seldom seen a better articulation on how systemic pressures can twist one's conception of sexual consent. Also, a shoot that goes wrong is one hell of a horror movie scene.

Ninja Thyberg has my vote for Best Director at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.