With Lukas Moodysson in a tailspin of gloomy cynicism (Lilya 4-Ever, The Hole in My Heart), Josef Fares has emerged as the savior of mainstream Swedish film. The Lebanese-born director’s wildly popular multi-racial comedies Jalla! Jalla! and Kops diffuse the sensitive issues of immigration and the welfare state with self-depreciating laughter. Fares produces mixed results, however, with his first earnest subject and substantial budget. The film’s first half portrays the 10-year-old title character’s last days in war-torn 1987 Beirut. Zozo dreams of and eventually succeeds in emigrating to Sweden, where his grandparents already live. The second half chronicles his difficult integration into his new school and the disillusionment with his adopted country. These scenes are far more successful than the Beirut sequences, which suffer from a cliché’d war æsthetic and a surfeit of melodrama. Fares is more comfortable relating the proximate realities of racial minorities (as he did in his comedies) than imagining his distant childhood country.
