A Man Called Ove by writer-director Hannes Holm is as delightful and moving as the internationally best-selling novel that inspired it. Holm crafted the script from Fredrik Backman’s novel about an angry “old” man who has lost the will to live. In fact, he has secured a noose and is about to step up on the stool beneath it when he hears the arrival of new neighbors who are about to change his life. Played convincingly by Rolf Lassgård, Ove, who has a strict set of principles and a short fuse, spends his days enforcing his housing block association’s rules, that only he cares about, and visiting his wife's grave. Ove has given up on life and decides to prepare to join his beloved wife Sonja (Ida Engvoll) in death. It’s plain that his decision isn’t quite as sad and desperate as we might imagine. He simply wants to move on, with finality, on his own terms. But life won’t let him. The primary catalyst for change arrives in the form of Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), a pregnant Middle Eastern immigrant who moves in next door to Ove with her husband and two daughters. She slowly chips away at his quiet resolve. A few days after his first attempt at suicide, he rigs a hose from his car exhaust so that he can asphyxiate himself; but Parvaneh knocks on the garage, in need of assistance. Slowly, Ove comes to appreciate that maybe he has a task or two that needs to be completed before he will be granted his wish to be with Sonja. A Man Called Ove was Sweden's submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar and won Sweden's equivalent of our Academy Award for the film and for Rolf Lassgård as Best Actor, an honor he also won at Seattle's Film Festival. Variety calls the film “a touching comic crowd-pleaser” and the Daily Express (UK) says it’s “a lovely charmer of a film.” 1:56. Rated PG-13 for raw crankiness. In Swedish with English subtitles.