Lasse Hallstroem

7.0 My Life as a Dog (1985)
6.4 The Cider House Rules (1999)
5.3 Chocolat (2000)
6.0 The Shipping News (2001)
6.0 Casanova (2005)
5.0 An Unfinished Life (2005)
6.5 The Hoax (2006)
6.3 Dear John (2010)
6.3 Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011)
5.0 Safe Heaven (2013)
5.0 The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)
5.0 A Dog's Purpose (2017)
6.2 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

Links:

Lasse Hallstroem (Sweden, 1946), who began directing music videos, directed En Kille och en Tjej/ A Guy and a Gal (1975), Jag ar med Barn/ Father to Be (1979), Tuppen (1981), Tva Killar och en Tjej/ Happy We (1983), Mitt Liv som Hund/ My Life as a Dog (1985), Alla vi Barn i Bullerbyn/ The Children of Noisy Village (1986), and Mer om oss Barn i Bullerbyn/ More About the Children of Noisy Village (1987) before turning to the English language with Once Around (1991) and especially What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).

Something to Talk About (1995), written by Callie Khouri, is a powerful, both bitter and affectionate, portrait of a patriarchal society that is disappearing.

Grace is a young attractive woman who discovers that her husband Eddie has slept with a friend of hers. The community expects to swallow it and mend the marriage in the name of respectability but she refuses. She leaves Eddie and moves in with her rich parents. Her father resents the whole situation and basically blames her for not trying to make peace with Eddie. She gets furious and takes advantage of a meeting of the women to publicly unmask the town's hypocrisy by naming all the scandals she ever heard of. Eddie comes to beg forgiveness but instead she poisons him. Her mother tries to talk "sense" into her, but Grace loses her temper again and insults her mother for having hidden her father's adulterous affairs, known to the whole town. Her mother wakes up: when Grace's father comes home drunk yet again, the mother refuses to open the door, taking the stand she never took when she was younger. She even tries to make him jealous by telling him that the town's doctor has always had a crush on her. Later the old man beats the (old) doctor who came to visit Grace's grandmother. Now Grace has hurt just about everybody around her. To further alienate her father she announces that she is filing for a divorce and wants to go back to school. At a horseback-riding competition Grace's mother is reminded of why she fell in love with her husband. The man loses the competition, a failure he is not used to, but his wife comes to console him. Eddie, deeply regrets his actions and still loves Gracy fondly, but it is not enough to apologize: Grace has come to realize that she would not be proud of herself unless she sticks to her accidentally obtained independence. Grace respects Eddie as a good father and even acknowledges his love, but she's stubborn. Eventually they both win: she goes back to school but she also accepts him back in her life.

The Cider House Rules (1999) is a partial but touching and well-crafted adaptation of John Irving's novel (focusing on Homer Wells and ignoring Melony).

Wilbur Larch is a doctor who runs an orphanage in a small town. A child, who was twice adopted and twice returned, becomes his favorite. He names him Homer Wells. Wilbur is a good man who also perform illegal abortions to avoid that pregnant girls die in the hands of unscrupolous practitioners. His only weakness is the passion for the ether, a powerful drug. Wilbur raises Homer like a son, teaching him the art of healing so he can stay and help out. Homer, already a young man, sleeps with the children. He shares their hopes and fears. Every time a couple comes to visit, the children line up hoping to be the ones selected. A child is always sick.
One day, though, taking advantage of a couple that came to the clinic for an abortion, Homer decides to venture in the world, even if Wilbur warns him that he won't find the same kind of home. Wilbur is disappointed because he had envisioned Homer as his own successor at the orphanage. Homer is helped by the couple: Wally is a brave soldier, whose family is in the apple business, and Candy is a sweet girl. They both befriend him. Homer works with the black apple-pickers, led by the distinguished Mr Rose, and gets along well with everybody. When Wally volunteers for Burma, though, Candy and Homer fall in love. Wilbur sends him a bag with the doctor's tools, but Homer is not attracted. Wilbur knows that his superiors want to remove him from the clinic and would like to advance Homer's candidacy. Even the news of the death of the sick child do not change Homer's mind. He is too involved in the love story with Candy. At the end of the season, the apple workers leave and Homer joins Candy in the lobster business. When the apple workers come back, a tragedy erupts: Rose's daughter is pregnant and refuses to reveal who is the father. But one day Candy prevails and the girl confesses that she has always been abused by her father. Homer himself confronts him in front of the other workers. Then he performs the abortion on the girl using the tools sent by Wilbur. The girl runs away after stabbing her father to death. The dying father begs Homer to tell the police that he committed suicide, in order to save the girl. On top of all of this, Homer receives a letter from the nurse: Wilbur died of an overdose. Wally comes back paralized after contracting encephalitis in the jungle. He is a hero of war. Candy feels guilty and Homer helps her decide for Wally. Homer has seen the world, its tragedies and horrors, and now is ready to go back to the place where he grew up, a place where, after all, smiles are more sincere and frequent. The children are very happy to see him. Homer takes on the new identity that Wilbur had created for him: even academic credentials. And finds out that Wilbur saved him from the war by declaring him sick of a heart disease that he does not have.

But his career has been devoted to mediocre mainstream Hollywood movies: Chocolat (2000), an adaptation of Joanne Harris' novel, The Shipping News (2001), an adaptation of Annie Proulx's novel, Casanova (2005), a biopic written by Michael Cristofer and Jeffrey Hatcher, An Unfinished Life (2005), an adaptation of Mark Spragg's novel, The Hoax (2006), an adaptation of Clifford Irving's novel, Hachi (2009), a lame remake of Kaneto Shindo's Hachiko Monogatari (1987), Dear John (2010), an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011), an adaptation of Paul Torday's novel, Hypnotisoren/ The Hypnotist (2012), the adaptation of Lars Kepler's novel, Safe Heaven (2013), another Sparks adaptation, The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), an adaptation of Richard Morais' novel, A Dog's Purpose (2017), an adaptation of Bruce Cameron's novel, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018), etc.

What is unique about this cinema database