Review by Michele E. Hawkins.
Lisa (Karen Franz Körlof), a successful newspaper cartoonist, is invited to join her siblings at her parents’ home in Norrland, where her father, played by Peter Haber, runs the forestry business owned for generations by her family. The invitation home coincides with Lisa’s mother Anncha’s (Suzanne Reuter) upcoming 70th birthday, but that’s not its purpose. Lisa decides to accept the invitation even though she clearly would rather not go, and in spite of a looming deadline for her upcoming book — a deadline she doesn’t seem able to meet.
Arriving home, Lisa’s difficult relationships with everyone at home are soon apparent, mirroring her troubled relationship with her publisher and ex-boyfriend, Alex (Arvin Kananian), who regularly rings to remind Lisa of her ever-closer publishing deadline and urges her to put her mind to meeting it. But Lisa seems intent on either ignoring him or being unpleasant to him, raising the publishing stakes ever higher.
When the purpose of the parental invitation is revealed — the inheritance of the forest and the forestry business upon their parents’ deaths — the three siblings must decide what futures they want. Lisa, as seems to be her usual way of avoiding life, responds by drinking, exercising, being unhelpful, and cartooning her unkind perceptions about other people rather than engaging in any meaningful discussion with her siblings about what might work.
Lisa is clearly driven by some inner demon, some past event to which she responds in ways destructive of herself and others, bringing hurt to those around her least deserving of it. It will take a near catastrophe to bring everything to a head in which the truth of the past comes to light, paving a way for healing and a better future.
With consistently excellent performances, spectacular cinematography of the forests and their surrounds, and some delightful, unexpected animations, One Day All This Will Be Yours is an intimate story of one woman’s grief, self-blame, and childhood trauma whose long fingers have dominated her entire life and stymied her relationships, creativity, and capacity for joy.
One Day All This Will Be Yours verges on overemphasising the feelings of a person who little considers the effects of her behaviour on others. What redeems it is that it also explores the possibility of collective healing through truth-telling, sharing of grief, and forgiveness.
Screening at Palace cinemas.
