His wife, Sonja, played as a young woman in the flashbacks by Ida Engvoll, sees this in the younger version of Ove ( Filip Berg), and the much older Ove acknowledges it after much bitching and griping. Yet, for all his crabbiness, there’s a level of selflessness inherent in Ove’s character, a trait he finds infuriating yet he begrudgingly accepts. Perpetually enforcing neighborhood rules nobody cares about nor adheres to, Ove can’t resist the opportunity to scold those who violate them. Instead, the humor comes from Ove’s stubbornness as a creature of habit. That is presented as real, understandable pain. Keep in mind that the black humor in this situation doesn’t arise from any mockery of Ove’s pain over missing his spouse. Priding himself on his reliability, Ove feels compelled to stop killing himself to address each interruption. His failures of self-annihilation are due more to bad timing than botched attempts-he is constantly interrupted by neighbors or some distracting event going on in his housing complex. Ove is a widower whose daily visits to his recently deceased wife’s gravesite end with his verbal promise to join her in the afterlife. For example, several flashbacks are cleverly presented as the “life flashing before one’s eyes” moments triggered by the suicide attempts of Ove ( Rolf Lassgård). Instead, he tweaks expectations with the way he presents the material, and his grip on the film’s tricky, tragicomic tone is masterful. Adapting Frederick Backman’s Swedish best seller, writer/director Hannes Holm doesn’t veer too far from the storytelling structure we’ve come to expect.

A man of ove