I have to tell you two things, kant:
First, I relate to most of what you told in your site
Second, if you pass near Valencia, it would be a pleasure to sit with a couple of chocolate milkshakes and talk about life.....
Seriously, First of all I have to state something, as you said, this film is whatever you want but not a light hearted comedy. It’s maybe one of the deepest I’ve ever seen, the fact is that we’ve been taught that only being symbolic or serious we can be deep.
I have to admit myself being a dead romantic
, a real one, someone who has always believed in the power of feelings against our own isolation.
Where I totally agree with you is in the theme of redemption by love. Agnes probably thought that old Patty Smith’s feeling “Jesus died for somebody else’s sins but not mines” but why can’t we better listen to Nick Lowe at someone’s side?. That
need of redemption is what maybe gathers all us. There are two possible issues at the end of the film, “it feels great, I can also be saved” or “I have an uncomfortable sensation, have I missed something that I won’t ever get?”.
I think that I really have been redeemed by my wife, a Russian girl whom I offered a one way ticket to the south (“I kidnapped her” as my beloved revolutionary sweet heart likes to say), after having hitch hiked to my Stockholm (in fact it was called Paris) and being convinced that there we can be even more lost after six long years of uneasy living.
Books and music have been a refuge from the world for so long that I lost the view that we can’t escape, we’re condemned to live in.
This is what the film is all about, how to find your place and how it is possible only with the help of a friend.
But what it makes us be dragged by the force of the film, and get the deep feeling of our need of being redeemed, without being conscious of it (and that’s maybe the most important), is the incredibly accurate acting of the two girls. Their art is something sublime, if you want to pick up signatures to convince Rebecca and Alexandra that they should go back to work, just make me a sign.
What I would like you to develop, is what you call irony in Moodysson’s look. I only see a straight loving look to the world, like someone said about Donovan, he’s a good guy and you can see it in its work.
There is something that leaves me a little confused, and I take that as a cultural difference. Coming from a southern country, I seem not to have the same perception on the “suicide” scene. Maybe here life seems less tragic, but I cannot take seriously that attempt, most of all by the fact that Agnes is intelligent enough to realize that a razorblade is not an effective way of killing herself......that does not dismiss the misery of Agnes feelings, you know it really hurts, but I think that she’s more playing with the romantic idea of suicide than committing a real one. Other viewers coming from countries where the tax of suicides is much higher than in Spain seem to take it much more seriously than I.......anyway it steals nothing to the atmosphere of the scene.
I’ve been amazed by your quote to Thomas Mann, as in my youth years, the shock received by Mann’s Magic Mountain (one of the strongest in my life, and I think is time to give it the second complete reading it deserves) was something that is as complicated to describe as the one received by FA. And the amazing idea that both shocks are related is turning over my head, as the book talks in a certain way about the feeling of finding a refuge and lost yourself outside the world and out of time, about a quest and a travel that can either save you or destroy you.
Lkeano, I didn’t forget you, yes to me father Olof too is someone very touching. Even if my father adored me, is not at all his kind. First of all, is clear that father Olof has passed through all of it and he wants to relieve his daughter’s sufferings but the barrier settled by age is much too strong. He is sweet, nearly the embodiment of how a father should be, but Moodysson also shows us his weaknesses, knowing what he should do he is not able to stand against his wife who is incapable to understand her daughter’s position.
The communication problem at that stage is something very complicated to avoid, and it is fed of the misunderstandings and little betrayals of everyday life. How could you trust someone who thinks that what is most important in your life is not as important as his own problems?.
Well, I’ve talked too much, and in Spain we say : who too much talks, too much stupid things says.........
And maybe, after all, Moodysson is thinking as Thomas Mann once said, "est-ce possible que j'aie tellement d'esprit?".
You're a headcase - like most people around here! 
, I’m sure Moodysson has to do a lot about it.
, not by her of course.