Imagine a talkative
low-level gangster doing a voice-over narration pointing that his
life has changed dramatically because of a certain stream of
occurrences. Add a bit working-class / low-life slang to it and some
humour just to make it more interesting. Congratulations, you have
got your basic gangster flick in which the tone can vary from a bit
self-serious drama to full-throttle comedy. Now, transfer the whole
thing from the usual context of Guy Ritchie’s London,
Quentin Tarantino’s Los Angeles or Martin Scorsese’s
New York to something different. Something European. Scandinavian.
Maybe Swedish.
Is not Sweden a
welfare state with low crime rate? It is and it is not, depending
from the viewpoint. It is quite a nice place to live if one gets to
the middle class or even a bit higher up the social ladder.
Unfortunately, that kind of life is not always an option for someone
of immigrant descent, especially if they are not promising athletes
or artists. They are usually confined to some kind of ethnic ghetto
located far enough from the city centre, ruled by unwritten rules,
where crime could prove to be a viable option. Sometimes we get a
chance to see that kind of life in Swedish films that aim for more
realistic feeling. Sometimes we just see them portrayed like
nameless, menacing criminal stereotypes.
The good news is
that Ivica Zubak, the co-writer / director of A Hustler’s
Diary, is of immigrant origins himself (born in Croatia), so he
actually understands the complexity of the problem, and his view of
the topic does not look like yet another potential minor theatre hit,
nor it seems like an “over-medicated” (doctored) festival drama.
His debut feature Dreams was a tense drama, on the verge of
becoming a thriller, set in a similar milieu like his newest film
that takes more clues from crime-comedies.
Our narrator guy is
Metin Turkoglu (co-writer Can Demirtas), a small-time burglar
and hustler who remembers the wise words of his late father that a
person should plant a tree, write a book and have a child before the
final moment. With the first task already done and while waiting for
a suitable partner for the third one, he zealously keeps his diary as
a source material for some future book project in which he describes
his and his friends’ not particularly legal adventures. However,
being smart enough and dreaming big enough, he dreams of switching
his career of crime for something more respectful, like becoming an
actor.
A botched audition
for acting studies at the national academy ends with him losing his
book. It is found by one of the professors (famous actress Lena
Endre playing herself) and shown to her hipster publisher buddy
Puma (Jörgen Thorsson), so instead of acting, Metin gets the
chance for writing career. The trouble is that all the names, places
and events in his “book” are as real as it gets. If the book gets
published, his life on the mean streets of Stockholm project-building
suburbia will be in a great danger.
Sincerity of the
portrait of immigrant life and crime as a social mobility shortcut
aside, A Hustler’s Diary works best as a darkly funny crime
comedy. Lost diary might seem like a typical plot device leading the
story down the predictable path, but Demirtas’ and Zubak’s script
is smart enough to throw us a curveball every now and then and
therefore keep us entertained. Some of the dialogue gets lost in
translation, since its verbal humour component is actually based on
the differences between street and standard language. Zubak also
deserves kudos for his sense of directing. He works well with actors,
most of them seen in his previous works, and shows admirable control
of the rhythm of the film. On the other hand, the visuals sometimes
leave a lot to be desired and the contrast between the city and
immigrant suburbs could have been accented better, but slamming the
film because of that might seem as nitpicking.
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