Swede Caroline: Brilliant or ...?

 

 

Swede Caroline (2024)

Directed by Finn Bruce and Brook Driver

Belstone Pictures, 97 minutes, R (pixelated nudity, minor violence)

★★★★

 

Swede Caroline (note spelling) is the strangest film I’ve seen since Hundreds of Beavers and matches its production values as a homemade film made on a shoestring budget. It was made in Britain and made just $68,000 worldwide, so I doubt you’ve ever heard of it. If you can stream it or find on DVD, though, it’s worth trying. You will have one of two opinions about it; you’ll either find it so wacky you’ll hoot despite yourself, or you’ll think it’s amateurish and dumb.

 

We will get into this, but first consider that few people on the planet as obsessed by gardening and rural nostalgia as the English. If you’ve ever watched Masterpiece Theatre it’s practically a given that there were mentions of gardening. How many times have we seen some upper-class twit with a name like Lady Handspring Buffington Chicken-Plucker trimming her prize-winning roses, or a country fair with Farmer Bursten Pantstear showing off his sheep? (E’yup lads, look at yonder ryet nice yows by the sitch.)

 

Swede Caroline is a mockumentary on gardening. Caroline (Jo Hartley) grows big marrows (a courgette or zucchini) that can weigh hundreds of pounds. Alas, not everything is on the up and up at the agricultural fair in Shepton Mallet (Somerset). Somehow Caroline’s marrows never win because the veggie judge (Mark Silcox) disqualifies her for things no one else sees-like a hairline crack- and awards the cup to someone from the better classes. Caroline is not such a person; she’s divorced, a bit on the rough side, lives in a council flat, and has a bear-like goofball boyfriend Willy (Celyn Jones) who is more brawn than brain.

 

Rigged judging is scandalous enough, but a line is crossed when someone sneaks into Caroline’s back garden, smashes into her small greenhouse, and steals her plants and seeds. It’s the crime of the century in Shepton Mallet. Willy tries to calm Caroline, but another neighbor, Paul (Richard Lumsen) launches a full-scale investigation. He fancies himself an expert because he’s watched a lot of TV programs about detectives and has their techniques down. (Not!) Caroline knows that Paul is basically an ageing slobbish geek who has no life, wiles away time playing video games, and watches computer porn. Speaking of which, Caroline approaches Louise (Aisling Bea) who allegedly does know something about detection, though every time we see her she’s wearing a slinky robe, as is her husband Lawrence (Ray Ferron).

 

As the investigations proceed, one silly thing after another occurs. I shan’t reveal them other than to say: bad cellphone video, jealousy, an MP (Member of Parliament), a close encounter with a garden fork, demolition, plant napping, social class satire, mallows posing as mammaries, and a group of swingers. Through it all, Kirsty (Rebekah Murrell) gives us a meta backseat point of view. She is allegedly making a documentary about the investigation. (Get it? A documentary within a mockumentary.) I won’t pretend that the script will knock Shakespeare from his literary pedestal. Directors Bruce and Driver made the film for just $64k, cut every corner that could be cut, and turned them into roundabouts. I’ll leave it you to determine if what’s on the screen really is amateurish or whether it’s tongue-in-cheek deliberate. I suspect it was an absolute hoot to make what is akin to an extended Monty Python sketch. Perhaps the cast made a few quid on the video release and buggered off to the pub to laugh and hoist a few pints.

 

About the title. There is a passing mention to a Swede, but that part of the plot is too convoluted to connect the dots clearly. My theory is that it’s another of the film’s many in-jokes. It could be an oblique nod to the film’s (tame) sex subplot. Sweden is generally credited with being the first nation to legalize what was then called “pornography.”* Then again, it might just be a bad pun. Swedes are rutabagas in Britain, though rutabagas are not marrows.

 

Like Hundreds of Beavers, the best way to digest Swede Caroline is just to go with it. Let its absurdity wash over you like V8 Juice.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Many film histories consider Sweden’s I am Curious Yellow (1967) to be a forerunner in mainstreaming movie with overt sexual content. It was followed by Blue in 1968. The Swedish flag is yellow and blue, though the films are black and white.