Before Swedish director Lasse Hallström moved to America and became a major success with such films as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules and  Chocolat, he made his name with a remarkable little movie titled My Life as a Dog (1985; released in America in 1987).  It’s an unsentimental yet charming coming-of-age tale which netted Hallström two Oscar nominations, for his direction and writing.

Young Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) is sent for the summer to a relative’s home in the country while his mother recuperates from an illness.  There, out of the shadow of his pestering big brother, Ingemar finally begins to develop his own personality.

Hallström and his three co-writers superbly capture the delicacies and difficulties of children struggling through adolescence, a struggle compounded by adults who mean well but are incapable of helping them.  Alternately comic, frank and poignant, My Life as a Dog shows that Swedish kids in 1958 and ‘59 found adolescence troublesome…and wonderful, just as it is here in America.  This universality regarding behavior toward a new kid in the neighborhood, sexual frankness, the clumsiness between boys and girls who are attracted to another but don’t have a clue how to deal with it and the emotions that spring from loss and betrayal is what distinguishes this film from so many other coming-of-age stories.  This one’s a gem.

The film also benefits from two terrific young performers, Malinda Kinnaman and Anton Glanzelius.  As the best soccer player on the boys’ team and a pretty solid boxer, Malinda Kinnaman is a charmer.  And Anton Glanzelius is unforgettable as the shy yet mischievous youngster Ingemar; one cannot help but feel his joys and sorrows as one’s own.  My rating:  ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2.  (9:1).