Darling, set in Stockholm at the turn of the millennia, is about the typical young, upper class girl, Eva, and the out-of-work, 60-year old, divorced Bernard, who is struggling with his life. Due to a series of unexpected events the two cross paths and form an unlikely and different sort of friendship. It is a dark society comedy, a tragic yet comic tale of the young obnoxious upper class, ordinary folks and the bitter conditions of working life in Stockholm in 2000. Beautiful and self-absorbed Eva engages in a banal infidelity affair, catalyst of her slow but relentless descent down the social ladder, and the unfamiliarity of the life of ordinary people, allowing the unexpected but doomed friendship with a good-hearted, unemployed engineer. This topical film is a highly accurate diagnosis of a nation fundamentally shaped by the traditional Social Democratic values of solidarity and equality, where today’s youth, born into universal prosperity, rebels with extreme narcissism and self-fetishisation.
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