With My Life As A Dog, Hallstrom breathed new hope into Scandinavian
cinema, which was then in a lull between Bergman and Dogme95. A true
original, its mix of off-beat humour and pain provided a massive
international hit, and it was only a matter of time before Hollywood
came knocking. For a while, Hallstrom looked like he might pull off what
few Europeans have managed: to keep his integrity while making
commercial cinema in the US. Gilbert Grape was as fresh a take on
American teendom as anything since Badlands, but with each film,
Hallstrom seems to lose more and more of the dark edge that made his work
interesting as well as charming.
