TIC TAC

Director's Statement

TIC TAG is a story that could only be told in a movie, it is composed of a number of separate stories about people at make-or-break moments in their lives: the police officer who needs a new apartment for his expanding family and gets unorthodox help from a fellow officer, Micke who wants to burn down his school but instead meets Jeanette, Kent — a wannabe Australia traveller and his Ylva, skinheads Lasse and Jorma who get a very strange propo-sal from the immigrant Pedro. Some stories are closely interwoven, others are no closer than people passing on the street. Their common denominator is that they all happen during one night in Stockholm.

— The Micke and Jeanette story is the only one shown in direct time sequence, the others move back and forward through time, says Daniel. The name of the film is a reflection of the role played by time in the film, even if other interpretations can also be inferred — a bomb ticking for example.

— I thought a lot about how the ordinary people in the film meet and interact in normal circumstances, they are just fairly ordinary types who find them-selves in extreme situations. This demanded a lot from the actors and I had to do a lot of screen tests with different people.

— In most movies there is just one main character who generally goes through some form of develop-ment. In TIC TAC, many people pass rapidly through serious emotional storms. Take Micke for example. He is absolutely manic at the start, then disgusting to Jeanette who puts him in such a Posi¬tion that he has to cry and beg for his life, finally he declares his love for her. Or the skinhead Lasse, the leader of the pack, who suddenly reveals to his amazed sidekick that he has fallen in love. But Lasse crosses the line and becomes dangerous. The actors had to be credible through all these shifts — and they are. I am very impressed.