Ola Rapace in ‘Svinalängorna’

Noomi and Ola Rapace

What can I say? This guy should be a huge Hollywood star. Ever since I watched him as Wallander’s side-kick in the Swedish TV detective series I’ve had a big crush on him.

In Svinalängorna (Pigsties), a Swedish film recounting a sorry tale of alcoholism and violence in a Finnish immigrant family in Ystad, in southern Sweden (the Wallander town), he has a somewhat small role. Ola plays the loving husband of Leena, (played by Noomi Rapace of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -fame) who’s successfully blocked out her miserable childhood until a phone call arrives from hospital saying her mother is dying.

The book by Susanna Alakoski, which the film is based on, is not actually as shocking as the film. I enjoyed the book very much because of the combination of dark humour and tragedy and hope it’ll soon be translated into English. Why it hasn’t as yet, I’m not sure. The film, a directorial film debut by Pernilla August won a Guldbagge, the Swedish Oscar, as did the Finnish actress Outi Mäenpää for her portrayal of the long-suffering wife who slowly, together with her husband, succumbs to alcoholism.

If this film ever hits your cinema, I urge you to go and see it. You’ll cry, you’ll laugh and you’ll never think of Sweden (or us Finns) in the same way again.

Outi Mäenpää in the film Svinalängorna

But back to the Rapace’s. According to the press the couple who have two children have separated. Amicably, they say themselves; not so, say the press. There’s talk that Noomi, who used to be the less famed actor of the two, dropped Ola as soon as she became a world-wide star through the Stieg Larsen Millenium films. Whatever, the important thing is that the man is FREE. Did you hear that, girls? She dumped him. Personally I think she needs her head examined….