A cut-price supermarket becomes an emblematic battleground for 21st century class struggle in The Store, a lightly experimental blend of social-realist drama and eerie stop-motion animation from Swedish writer-director Ami-Ro Sköld. The action take place in a nameless Swedish town, but it could be anywhere in the western world where poorly paid service jobs are filled by a multi-racial underclass of unskilled workers and immigrants.
Sprawling past the two-hour mark, The Store takes too long to make some fairly blunt and obvious points about the evils of consumer capitalism. Even so, this is a commendably thoughtful, quietly angry feature elevated by a strong ensemble cast and clever use of animation as a kind of counterpoint commentary on the live-action scenes. Building on its low-key festival launch late last year, Sköld’s impressive hybrid drama is screening at IFFR in Rotterdam this week. More festivals are likely to take an interest, with domestic release scheduled for April.
The anti-heroine at the centre of The Store is punky single mother Eleni (Eliza Sica), an ambitious young manager being groomed for promotion by her callous corporate boss Karsten (Fredrick Evers). The Faustian price of this “opportunity” means Eleni is under increasing pressure to neglect her newborn baby, slash worktime rotas, impose zero-hours contracts and fire less productive employees, some of whom are her friends. Inevitably, each new turn of the screw amplifies friction between the store staff, who are forced to abandon working-class solidarity to compete for ever-dwindling financial rewards. Back-stabbing is encouraged, and no good deed goes unpunished. Sköld tracks this process with a caustic eye, even if the message becomes a little heavy-handed at times, with heroes and villains painted in monochrome shades.
Pulling back from these Stockroom Syndrome tensions, Sköld also fleshes out various individual character plotlines. Jackie (Daysury Valencia) is newly pregnant, but desperate to keep the baby secret to avoid losing work. Single dad Aadin (Arbi Alviati) is struggling with two young daughters, spiralling debts and cuts to his state social security payments. Meanwhile, the store becomes a magnet for a nearby commune of refugees and travellers, including Zoya (Eleftheria Gerofoka), who regularly raids the shop’s dumpster bins for waste food that is still edible. Aadin forms a warm bond with Zoya, leading to tentative hints of a budding romance during an overlong party sequence at the commune, which seems designed to represent a more equitable alternative to the heartless dog-eat-dog logic of capitalism.
Seamlessly switching into stop-motion for scenes that take place on the shop floor itself, the animated sections of The Store are particularly strong, transforming the story’s human protagonists into grotesque, distorted, crumbling caricatures surrounded by mountains of rotten fruit and decaying vegetables. Perhaps Sköld intends these purposely ugly interludes to illustrate how capitalism dehumanises ordinary citizens into twisted, soulless monsters. The allegorical purpose is a little fuzzy, but these detours into a nightmarishly surreal parallel reality are strikingly effective, adding an extra horror-lite dimension to the film’s otherwise fairly conventional docu-drama aesthetic.
The Store is slightly let down by its baggy pacing, which blunts the urgency of its message, plus occasional lapses into the kind of tear-jerking melodrama that recalls veteran politically engaged film-makers like Ken Loach at their most preachy. But the precariat, that vast invisible army of casual workers doing low-wage jobs across the world, are undoubtedly a worthwhile dramatic subject and Sköld does an admirable job of humanising their perilous lack of purchase power in the neoliberal supermarket. The animated sequences, especially, point towards rich potential for the director’s future work.
Director, screenwriter: Ami-Ro Sköld
Cast: Eliza Sica, Daysury Valencia, Arbi Alviati, Eleftheria Gerofoka, Sabrin Jaja, Fredrick Evers
Cinematography: Hanna Högstedt
Editing: Patrik Forsell
Music: Giorgio Giampà
Producer: Lovisa Charlier
Production companies: Onoma Productions (Sweden), Indyca (Italy), Film i Väst (Sweden), GötaFilm (Sweden), Fidalgo Film Production (Norway)
World sales: Fandango
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Harbour)
In Swedish, Russian, Greek
143 minutes
