Together 99

In Together 99, Lukas Moodysson reassembles the cast of Together to take stock of the Tillsammans commune twenty-four years later. It is 1999, and Klasse and Göran are the only remaining members of the group. To raise their flagging spirits, Klasse secretly invites the erstwhile members of the commune for Göran’s birthday bash. As estranged friends catch up with each other over a highly eventful evening, old scars resurface alongside new hopes. Possessing the immediacy of a fly-on-the-wall documentary and the formal wit of a sitcom, Together 99 crafts a biting ensemble comedy of middle-age disillusionment in which the ideological and sexual certainties of yesteryear have ceased to be. If its predecessor looked at the foibles of communal living through a post-Soviet lens, Together 99 observes post-internet social atomisation from the vantage point of contemporary cultural politics, this temporal distance equally revealing of our times. Moodysson’s film is motored by social awkwardness, but it gradually deepens to examine the personalities behind character types. The result is a touching, bittersweet portrait of lingering regrets and frustrated desires. A work that assures the viewer that everyone is profoundly, necessarily messed up in their own way. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)