His mother becomes too sickly to raise him, so his responsible but humorless uncle (Leif Ericson) sends him off (sans Erik and the dog) to a rural village to live with Gunnar (Tomas von Brömssen), a much more affable uncle. Gunnar's blank slate wife is Ulla (Kicki Rundgren) and they are childless.
Gunnar's house is owned by the glassworks factory that serves as the village's chief employer. They share the house with an elderly couple (Didrik Gustavsson and Vivi Johansson). The old man spends his day in bed but has a secret fetish for women's underwear, known only by Ingemar.
Ingemar soon adapts to the village and his new, extroverted father figure. He makes friends with The Boy with Green Hair (Jan-Philip Hollström) and Saga (Melinda Kinnaman), a tomboy with an eternal crush on Ingemar. Karin (Susanna Wetterholm) also has eyes for Ingemar, but his crush is Berit (Ing-Marie Carlsson), an attractive blonde nearly old enough to be his mother.
Eccentric local residents include a sculptor obsessed with nudity (Lennart Hjuström) and a man who spends his days working on his roof (Magnus Rask).
How others will see it. This movie charmed many upon release, and brought Lasse Hallström his first international recognition. His efforts earned Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Oddly enough, the movie was not nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, although it won in that category at BAFTA and the Golden Globes.
Today, Hallströn is better known for Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. My Life as a Dog is less popular, but the imdb.com user ratings are very high and consistent. The loss of his mother and dog undoubtedly evoke sympathy and parental concern in viewers.
How I felt about it. Ingemar deals with his troubles by comparing them to those even more unfortunate, such as Laika the Soviet space dog, launched to Earth orbit and certain death in 1957. Aside from his thoughtful narration, Ingemar doesn't seem especially bright, but he is good at getting into trouble.
He's not alone, though, since a neighbor bathes in an ice-cold stream, and another falls two stories from a unicycle to the ground. Because it is a movie, those two escape consequential injury, as does Ingemar when he puts his pecker into a coke bottle, or falls through a skylight sending glass shards everywhere except into him or Berit. Don't try these stunts at home.
Besides these dubious activities cast as comedy, we have to wonder why women of all age fawn over the ordinary-looking Ingemar. Even aged Vivi Johansson sleeps next to him. If only Ingemar had YouTube in 1959; he could have been the next Justin Beiber.
But of course there was no internet then, and apparently Sweden was a decade behind the times, since the cars, radios, and televisions all appear to be antiques by American standards of the day. My Life as a Dog is reminiscent of Cinema Paradiso in that it depicts a nostalgic era that never really was.