Customer Reviews

Junk Mail ( Budbringeren ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Norway ]

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Junk Mail, 1996 a romantic thriller, and with a humorous dark comedy style about a mailman who is low-life, pathetic loser complete with a voyeuristic character. Roy Amundsen lives and works on the seedy part of Oslo, Norway; he is scrungy, eats spaghetti out of a can, and a terrible mailman who nonchalantly dumps stacks of mail from his route, opens other people's mail, or steals it for some excitement to add to his humdrum life.

The director, Pal Slateune, has given the viewer another side of Norway, a gritty, sleezy, section of town with oddball, screwy characters.

One day, a young girl, Line, partially deaf girl who works at the dry cleaners. She accidently leaves her keys in her mailbox and Roy steals the key, and makes a copy for himself and peruses her apartment. With his own key to her place, he comes back another time and makes himself at home.

Some might feel Roy is disgusting, but he isn't dangerous, he's just a bumbling loser and a real creep. His superiors at the post office don't give him much thought, especially when they have to give him an accommodation award when he got beat up by thugs who tried to steal the mailbag. Roy couldn't let go of the mailbag because the strap got stuck in the altercation. He is a fool whose voyeurism and snooping opens up the storyline to a thriller/murder. With Roy hiding out in her apartment, Line comes home and fearful of her partner in crime, Georg calling on the phone, she attempts a suicide and overdoses. Here, the story takes another turn.

Everything worked in this film, the storyline connected very well; it was kind of Seinfeldian, few subplots connecting well. Very humorous.

I don't believe this film is available in DVD yet, and it may be hard to find apart from Amazon. The subtitles are easy to read and in large type. This is an enjoyable movie. The film won First Prize at the International Critic's Week Cannes Film Festival and Jury Prize at the Naples Film Festival in Italy.

I recommend another dark comedy, French film Delicatessen....... Rizzo