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Described by Swedish helmer Roy Andersson as "a farce about the human condition", You, The Living offers a bleak tableau of everyday despair that makes his 2001 effort look positively euphoric. Following a variety of glum individuals across a faceless city landscape leached of colour, its unconnected scenes share a rueful melancholy from which dreams, booze and incongruously jovial music provide the only respite. Yes folks, it's another depressing picture from Scandinavia. What were the odds?

"No one understands me!" wails a sozzled crone at her ineffectual husband, a refrain that echoes through Andersson's movie like a suicidal mantra. Her gloom, however, does not stop her bursting into song - one of many absurdist flourishes that suggest the director's world view isn't quite as gloomy as it first appears. An irate neighbour destroys his ceiling protesting at the tuba player upstairs; a barber takes hair-raising revenge against a racist client; and an overweight woman makes love while wearing an antique soldier's helmet. Bizarre fantasy sequences, meanwhile, show a man face execution for a magic trick gone wrong and a young innocent imagine wedded bliss with a punk guitarist who barely acknowledges her existence.

"CALCULATED RANDOMNESS"

Using lengthy, static, wide-angle shots that keep all of the characters at arm's length, Andersson's stated aim is to "defy conventional cinematic narrative structures". Some might be frustrated by such calculated randomness. Viewers who stick with it, though, will be rewarded by an arresting tapestry that is considerably more than the sum of its parts.

You, The Living (Du Levande) is out in the UK on 28th March 2008.