A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting on Existence, film review: Golden Lion winner is perceptive in its depiction of human behaviour

(12A) Roy Andersson, 100 mins Starring: Holger Andersson, Nils Westblom

Maia-Lii Kaar and Gunnar Bergström in 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence'

Roy Andersson's Golden Lion winner marks the third part in his "living trilogy" and is very similar in its deadpan, Samuel Beckett-like humour to its predecessors, Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007).

The film consists of stylised scenes, shot tableau-fashion, in which characters confront their mortality. Even in the most absurd situations, they show the same slightly bewildered fatalism. This is the kind of film in which a character using a corkscrew to open a wine bottle risks a fatal heart attack. The protagonists are a pair of woebegone travelling salesmen who try to hawk novelty items – vampire teeth – to customers who have no need of such bric a brac.

For all its more far-fetched moments (King Charles XII of Sweden dropping in on a contemporary Swedish café on his way to and from battle, say), the film is perceptive in its depiction of human behaviour. In one of the film's finest and funniest scenes, onlookers in an airport cage try to work out what best to do with the shrimp sandwich and glass of beer that a man has paid for moments before his death.