Together (Swedish: Tillsammans)

By Hayley Turner 

The film Together is about a Swedish commune in the 1975. The commune is named Together and is home to a mirage of characters – Goran the unofficial leader of the group, his girlfriend Lena, divorced couple Lasse and Anna and their son Tet, and the other minor characters Klass, Erik, Birger, Signe, and Sigvard. The daily routine of the commune is thrown off balance when Goran sister Elizabeth and her two children, Eva and Stefan, move in after leaving Elizabeth’s abusive husband Rolf.

One of the main themes of the movie is freedom – freedom to be who you are, freedom to love, freedom to leave, freedom to live and numerous other freedoms. Although freedom is a major theme the understanding that freedom come at a price is also important. Freedoms are expressed and challenges through out the film. The freedom that I am going to focus on is the freedom of sex. This freedom is shown in the movie with the relationships between Anna and Lasse, Anna and Elizabeth, Goran and Lena, Lena and Erik and Lasse and Klass.

In the beginning of the film the audience discovers that Anna and Lasse were once married but recently divorced when Anna declared she was a lesbian. Now Anna is freely expressing her lesbian life style while Lasse is trying to come to terms and understand the new relationship. Mean while Klass who is an openly gay man is trying to get Lasse to understand that being gay is not that bad and could be something he could enjoy. Lasse denies Klass’ advances for most of the film. When Elizabeth moves into the commune she is an instant interest to Anna and the two instantly strike up a friendship. Elizabeth is not a lesbian and does not appear to believe that Anna is making advances on her and as an audience it is difficult to see if the relationship is just a good friendship or perhaps a romantic one.

The prospect of the Elizabeth/Anna relationship is dashed when Elizabeth’s estranged husband returns and Elizabeth takes him back. During this portion of the movie you can see that Anna had hoped to pursue a relationship with Elizabeth and when her hopes are dashed she returns to Lasse but is met with a surprise; the surprise being that Lasse has moved beyond her and has given into the advancements of Klass.

The last group of relationships to examine is the relationships between Goran, Lena and Erik. Goran and Lena are in an open relationship, which is known to the audience through pillow talk between the two characters. The openness of their relationship come to a head when Lena request to sleep with Erik to cheer him up following a fight will another commune member. Goran agrees and Lena and Erik sleep together. Once Lena returns to Goran, the audience discovers that Lena had her first orgasmic sexual experience with Erik and that she is unable to remove emotions from the encounter. This cause great strain in Goran and Lena relationship, a bigger strain comes when Erik moves out of the commune because of his unhappiness and Lena is unable to control her emotions and cries about his departure. To conclude the relationship Goran throws Lena out because she got to emotionally attached to another and could not handle the emotions involved with the openness of their relationship.

From the relationship portrayed in the movie “Together”, the freedom of sex is understood, in terms of the joys and consequences derived from expressing the freedom.