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Writer, director, and co-star Jesper Ganslandt's debut movie is one of those imperfectly perfect and bittersweet cinematic experiences that magically feels snatched from life--perhaps because it very well may be. Ganslandt and four of his also twentysomething closest friends live in the small Swedish city Falkenberg, a waterfront town where the pace of life is witnessed in these young men's sleepy coming and goings during these last summer days. And all Falkenberg Farewell does is follow these young men around--Ganslandt's actual friends playing fictionalized composites of themselves--as they slouch toward adulthood while trying to keep one foot in their carefree youth that's wrapped up in skinny dipping, wandering through the woods, and sharing memories about growing up together. That they all realize that very soon they may be heading in different directions--and away from home--vibrates just beneath surface of every scene, lending the movie that peculiar sensation of watching people become nostalgic for a past they didn't realize they were going to long for some day. Shot primarily hand-held and in soft, golden hues, consider Falkenberg Farewell less a narrative movie than an immersion in somebody else's time and place.

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