Håna (Gösta Ekman) is a bit of a loser – he doesn’t have a steady job, relying on some lacklustre attempts to start a business to get by. This arrangement works splendidly for him, since he is mostly funded by his mother (Margaretha Krook), a wealthy dowager who proclaims herself to be the widow of a notable consul (when in reality, her late husband was only a mildly successful consultant), having carefully saved all of her money in order to enjoy her retirement, which her greedy son seems to be squandering all on his own fruitless endeavours. His latest plot involves secretly renting out his mother’s gorgeous Stockholm apartment to a sleazy Italian director, who need a high-end location to shoot his last “film”. For his efforts, Håna is given a considerable amount in order to secure the apartment – but he obviously can’t tell his dissenting mother about his aims, as he knows she would resoundingly disapprove. Instead, he decides to send her off on a brief vacation, which she begrudgingly accepts. However, as fate would have it, the luckless Håna finds himself swept up on a cross-country journey, on which he meets the striking Boel (Lena Nyman), a lovely woman who he immediately falls for, through the combination of her congenial charms and effortless ability to make any situation humourous, which is something Håna has not experienced very often in his life. They immediately become close, but she doesn’t realize the depths to which his stupidity can go, and while she is mostly enamoured with him, her goodwill gradually erodes as she sees what a dismal human he actually is – but love can overcome any obstacle in the end.

Swedish cinema contains many hidden gems, and it’s always been a fruitful endeavour to venture into the film histories of any of the Scandinavian countries and sample from their wide range of ambitious productions. A relatively obscure, but exceptionally brilliant, film hailing from the great nation is Peas and Whiskers (Swedish: Morrhår & ärtor), a directorial effort by Gösta Ekman, who is well-regarded as one of Sweden’s most notable comedic minds, both in front of and behind the camera. A darkly comical satire about metropolitan life in contemporary Sweden at the time, Peas and Whiskers is a wonderfully compelling film that takes a few bold risks, but still plays it safe for the most part, maintaining its composure while allowing the more absurd charms that underpin it to make their way to the centre and encompass what is essentially a slice-of-life comedy with a subversive edge. An incredibly silly film, but in that very traditional way, where the oddities come to provide a wonderfully comforting sense of security and reassurance that we’re watching something that is aiming to entertain more than it is to educate (despite the tone of the film being one of intentional miscommunicating many supposedly profound ideas), Ekman shows a remarkable prowess as a performer and director, enough to qualify this film’s entry into the canon of great comedies that may not be groundbreaking, but are still enjoyable enough to warrant the curious viewer’s time, with the likelihood being that an open-minded audience may be just as captivated by this deranged little comedy as any other film.

It would be foolish to call Peas and Whiskers a major work of Swedish cinema, when in reality it is a film built on some of life’s most lovable trivialities. This is found from the outset in the title, where we see two of the most common, inoffensive concepts known to our collective culture – a cat’s whiskers and everyday garden-variety peas, being repurposed as a murder weapon (which turns out to be incredibly ineffective) – and Ekman relishes in absolutely every moment, the director finding the underlying humanity in some of the most absurd situations, which only further prove to qualify this film as one that carries more depth than one would expect from a cursory glance. The structure of Peas and Whiskers is almost offensively simple, since it follows the misadventures of an incredibly mediocre middle-aged man without any discernible skills, focusing on his existence as someone who is always on the wrong side of society, regardless of the effort he is putting in to fit into what everyone expects of him. Presented as a series of short vignettes focusing on his various travails at first, but eventually evolving into a very smart and witty comedy that uses these narrative strands to great effective (there’s very little better than a comedy that makes good use of continuity), the film has a varied style, albeit one that is executed with a remarkable simplicity, meaning that it never feels as if it is venturing too far beyond what it knows itself to be capable of. A film knowing its limitations is almost as admirable as one that pushes itself to its full capacity – and there’s something so audacious about a film that is so content with being itself, and instead forcing the audience to adapt to its quirks, rather than the other way around, which is more common with crowd-pleasing comedies.

There’s a dark streak that underlies Peas and Whiskers, a sense of bleak, nihilistic comedy that sharply contrasts the exuberant material, with Ekman finding the perfect balance. Part of the success comes from his decision to cast himself in the lead role. It’s not unheard of for a director to place themselves at the centre of their own film, but it becomes a slightly trickier matter when the character they’re playing is as abhorrent as Håna is here. He is the kind of anti-hero who is more of an idiot than a villain – he means well, but he constantly finds his attempts to take a shortcut backfiring in spectacular ways. Ekman deserves credit for going as far as he did with this character. There isn’t much reason for the role to be as entertaining as it was, since there’s a depth to it that some may not expect when venturing into the film. This is also a case of a main character being bolstered by a strong supporting cast – Margaretha Krook is tremendous as Ekman’s maniacal mother who turns out to actually have a heart of gold, and Lena Nyman – herself indelibly imprinted into the cinematic culture through her iconic work in Vilgot Sjöman’s fascinating arthouse drama, I Am Curious (Yellow) – is a burst of joy whenever the film needs to be improved, which she does wonderfully. The cast of Peas and Whiskers is truly impeccable, with Ekman drawing out some wonderful performances from his ensemble, who are all willing to tread through the most absurd, nonsensical comedy they could imagine, all based on the knowledge that humour doesn’t always come from playing it entirely safe, and one needs to add something new to the proceedings, even if it is only a slight change in how a character is constructed, which makes a profound difference.

Peas and Whiskers is a terrific film, and a discovery I am beyond pleased to have made. Having stumbled on it by chance meant that I was heading into his film blind and without any foreknowledge, other than some contextual information on some of the actors and the director, but not any solid evidence that this film would be a success. This risk paid off, since it resulted in 90 minutes of unadulterated hilarity, a film that demonstrates the incredible warmth carried by this kind of quaint European comedy, those which tend to be more about giving the viewer a few hours of diversion, rather than being anything more than that. There’s a sense of sweetness that undercuts the acidic dark comedy, Ekman effortlessly balancing them and finding the genuinely interesting aspects of both approaches, which creates an amusing but otherwise relatively slight comedy that shows depth, but in a way that is productive to its end goal of enthralling audiences, rather than breaking new ground. Reliable but wonderfully so, Peas and Whiskers is a delightfully irreverent comedy that makes good use of its jagged edge, and becomes a wonderfully unique comedy that manages to be captivating without offering too much, knowing that promising what one can’t deliver isn’t always as admirable as it may appear. More likely to appeal to those with a taste for the absurd, and the willingness to suspend disbelief, Peas and Whiskers is still a very effective film, and a worthwhile comedy for anyone who is looking for a lovable diversion that is both entertaining and oddly rewarding on a much deeper level.