29/01/2024 - The synth movement plays a central part in Patrik Blomberg Book’s heartfelt story of music and young love in a small Swedish town in the mid-1980s

Erik Svedberg-Zelman and Rebecca Plymholt in Love Will Save Us

Back in the day, the synthesiser was a highly controversial musical phenomenon, seen as a threat and an enemy to “authentic” and “honest” rock music. By the mid-1980s, though, such sentiments had had little impact on the array of acts, from Depeche Mode to Devo, from Yello to YMO, conquering charts, stages and clubs from London to Ohio to Zurich to Tokyo, and back to Düsseldorf city, where Kraftwerk manned the machines (or vice versa?) that would change the world. All the while, little “mini-Düsseldorfs” were popping up all over the place, like in Patrik Blomberg Book’s feature debut, Love Will Save Us [+see also:
interview: Patrik Blomberg Book
film profile], set in rural, small-town Sweden back in 1986. Indeed, the original title, Düsseldorf, Skåne, specifically identifies the southern province of Scania in this world-premiering entry in the Nordic Light section of the 2024 Göteborg Film Festival.

Fredrik has his analogue, monophonic Roland SH-101 plugged in and his big black bangs tangled just right. He’s got the jitters, as his band Vision Moderne has its debut gig at the local community centre on Saturday, with some lyrics still unwritten. He loves his music and Nina, the cool city girl who turned up in school one day, miraculously a fellow synth kid as well as being into photography. They’re 19, they’re together, and the world is just waiting to be explored, though Fredrik’s music and Nina’s camera lens.

Nina has the easier life, as part of a bustling, intellectual, middle-class family. Fredrik’s place is a darker one, with two alcoholic parents, now separated, for whom he more often than not has to act as the responsible party, clearly not in his scope. When Nina applies for a photo school in Stockholm, Fredrik’s jitters turn full-throttle, leading to a break-up. He then sits down to write some win-back-Nina lyrics for that last song, to be called… “Love Will Save Us”.

According to the director’s notes, Love Will Save Us may well be the first-ever fiction feature to play out in a synth-pop setting (although please contact us if you know of any previous attempts), whereas the coming-of-age love story has certainly been around the block. But Blomberg Book, a leading Swedish music-video director since the early 1990s and later an award-winning documentary filmmaker, not only knows his craft, but also quite a bit of this partly autobiographical story first-hand. Through these conditions, and despite a modest budget, he creates a heartfelt gem, recalling the work of his older-generation countryman Bo Widerberg at times with pitch-perfect performances from a cast of several fresh new faces.

As Nina and Fredrik, Rebecca Plymholt and Erik Svedberg-Zelman are newcomer-of-the-year material, already in January. Among the grown-ups, comedian Anna Blomberg (the director’s sister-in-law) and Magnus Schmitz stand out as Fredrik’s stricken parents. Lukas Moodysson is thanked in the end credits, there’s an in-joke about the director’s own band at the time, Ausgang Verboten, and evidence throughout that synth music was both authentic and deeply honest.

Love Will Save Us was produced by Sweden’s Fat City Pictures, with co-production by Film i Skåne.