No, "bittersweet" isn't the right word for me. But there are definitely changes in the experience, obviously having to do with getting older. It's now almost 13 years since I first saw it, and exactly 8 years since it took me hostage and occupied my entire life for quite a while. Today, my feelings for it are less tainted by a bittersweet memory of my days of growing up (which happened in the 80s, anyway, when things were waaaaaaay different - we had no mobile phones, for example
), but are rather focused on an aspect of the film which I more or less completely neglected eight years ago, namely the role of Olof. I've started to identify a lot with him (and also started to resemble him physically, I'm afraid
), and it now appears to me as if his "25-years-later"-speech is the keystone of the entire narration. I've also started to see some kind of alter ego of Moodysson in him. I am pretty sure that Agnes is a portrait of the artist as a young girl, so I read Pappa Olof's words as Lukas's message from the future to his own former self. I can so absolutely totally relate to that monologue, I hope to be able to remember it when someday I should have to comfort my own children.
I watched it yesterday, by the way. (And I only watched it twice since 2007, I guess.) One of the things I noted was that I experience it as running
faster every time. It felt as if the whole thing lasted for only half an hour. I kept thinking, hey, is that scene already coming on, damn, so it's gonna be over soon. All that wonderful dialogue that I wished to revel in, swooshing past me mercilessly. I seriously considered watching it in slow motion.