my memory might be a bit hazy , but together dealt with the following subjects among a dozen different characters : growing up , divorce , lesbianism/homosexuality , loneliness , communism , spousal abuse , shoddy parenting , infidelity , and marital discontent . i might have forgotten about the release of abba's third album in there , but again my memory flickers . what i do remember is that the movie takes place in 1975 stockholm at a large house full of free-loving communists -- kind of like the real world , if karl marx and hugh hefner shared a flat with an mtv feed . the leader of the group is göran ( gustav hammertoe ) , a gentle fellow with a great beard , whose sister , elisabeth ( lisa lindgren ) , escapes her abusive lout of a husband , rolf ( michael nyqvist ) by moving with her two kids into göran's clan . this , of course , sets in motion a series of changes for everyone in the house . the moviegoer is also in for a challenge . there are so many changes , along with so many characters , that it's hard to keep up . i entirely forgot about two characters before they were reintroduced midway through the film . dramas with large ensemble casts are difficult to maintain , and together is a great example of why that happens . to me the model of a great ensemble drama is paul thomas anderson's boogie nights , because it took the time and the effort to let us know a bit about each and every character . it also had technical flair and a plot that dug into the characters' hubris and fragile egos . writer/director lukas moodysson doesn't let us know the characters because it's in such a damned hurry . we get no sense of a group dynamic , no sense of character structure . it's the cinematic equivalent of a long flipbook . very rarely in together do we get an idea of the emotions behind the characters . at one point , göran suddenly and violently throws out his promiscuous girlfriend , lena ( played with misguided , slutty conviction by anja lundkvist ) . it's easily the movie's most passionate moment . we've seen lena's cavalier treatment of göran and we understand his action , though he says their relationship is open . however , moodysson never offers this kind of absorbing history for everyone else , so we're essentially stuck with empty gestures . when he tries to offer some sense of togetherness ( no pun intended ) like a soccer game or a crowded dinner table , there's little to hold on to because we feel like we don't know these people . i would have been content just watching rolf try to win back the confidence of his wife and kids ; rolf's struggle to gain redemption is fully believable and the sturdiest branch on the plot tree . so much goes on that it's not nearly as effective as it should be . the director is too busy looking at the repressed family next door , homosexual encounters , and the household's introduction to meat and television . there are definitely some highlights sprinkled throughout , apart from the copious amount of nudity ( both male and female ) . the relationship that elisabeth's pubescent daughter ( emma samuelsson ) has with the boy next door ( henrik lundström ) hits all the awkward notes , as does enqvist's painful attempts to get back in his family's good graces . the movie needs twenty more minutes , five fewer subplots , and a compass . 
