Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson are a Swedish television duo who have scored a big hit in the Nordic country with their film The Last Journey, which is now coming to the UK
“We are the Swedish Ant and Dec, but with soul and brains. They would never be able to pull anything off like this.”
So claims Filip Hammar, who makes up half of the Nordic TV duo with his long-term pal Fredrik Wikingsson.
It’s likely that every European country has its own version of the comedy sidekick partnership – a trusted duo that can be airdropped onto Saturday night shiny floor shows at a moment’s notice to deliver an evening of safe laughs.
The reason Filip and Fredrik are making waves in the UK, or at least attempting to, is that they’ve recently broken out of their televisual moulds onto the silver screen.
The Last Journey is their first feature film, which tells the story of Filip’s relationship with his father Lars, a retired secondary school teacher who is struggling to throw himself into post-work life. Filip worries his father has lost the lust for life that burned so brightly during his younger years, and so decides to scoop him up out of his home in Köping (widely known as the most boring town in Sweden) and take him on a road trip.
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With light relief coming from the backseat in the form of Fredrik, the father and son head out of middle Sweden towards southern France – the destination of cherished family holidays of Filip’s youth, and where Lars was in his anecdote-sharing, joke cracking pomp.
The film proved a huge hit with the Swedish public, quickly becoming the most-watched documentary in the country’s history and being chosen as Sweden’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards.
On its surface, the film is a classic road trip caper, filled with the kind of comic relief you’d expect from a caustic duo stuffed into an orange Renault 4 to cheer up an 80-year-old who seems a little lost in life.
They employ their whole box of comedic tricks to do so, including staging an empassioned traffic spat for the benefit of Lars, whose steady Swedish heart has long loved the spiritedness of French road ragers.
By the film also goes deeper. It is, at its core, an exploration of how one has to reinvent oneself post-retirement, and how relationships between adult children and their parents become more complicated as life goes on.
For Filip, who goes to great, quite absurd lengths to carve out spaces in which his dad can relive his younger years and flourish, the journey taught him a powerful lesson.
“It made me realise there is a value in just hanging out with him, even if he is sitting in a Belgian armchair at home. That is one of the important messages in the film. Now, I try to avoid talking to him in a certain way. We have more meaningful conversations now,” Filip tells the Mirror from his home in America.
Fredrik, who is talking on loudspeaker while, appropriately, on a long drive, adds: “We told ourselves, maybe this is going to work. Maybe he will get his zest for life back. Then we realised it would be more about his acceptance of a new life.”
Even though Fredrik has been on this journey with Lars and Filip, he is not prepared for his own version. He is not referring to the journey from Sweden to the Mediterranean, but to seeing his parents change in their later years.
“I’m not prepared for it. You can think you are, but when it hits, it will, it will be devastating,” he opines a little mournfully.
The soulfulness of the duo, and how inappropriate the Ant and Dec comparison might be, comes through the more time you spend with Filip and Fredrik.
“You cannot be prepared for it. It is the death before death. When you see your parents slipping away. It is quite common that you lie to yourself,” Filip says.
The Last Journey has connected with viewers in Sweden because of its exploration of this uncomfortable and universal truth, which is as funny and unflinching as it is tender and earnest.
They hope that when it arrives in British cinemas on June 20, it will connect with viewers in the UK.
“I am trying not to be cynical for once, and to embrace some real feelings. We are humbled about it, but our expectations are not that high,” Filip admits ahead of the film’s UK launch. Their big hope is that a significant chunk of the 45,000 Swedes living in the country turn up.
If they don’t, then perhaps Brits will find some joy in a particularly unusual but thoroughly uplifting road trip flick. Or at least some use in their top travel tip.
“Wherever you go, try to experience the gas station culture of the country. In Italy, they are incredible,” Filip advises.
