David Färdmar and Björn Elgerd | Vi skulle bli bra föräldrar (We Could Be Parents) / 2016

valentine to a scornful lover

by Douglas Messerli

RATING

Björn Elgerd (screenplay), Björn Elgerd and David Färdmar (directors) Vi skulle bli bra föräldrar (We Could Be Parents) / 2016 [15 minutes]

 

Sitting in a vast empty lot outside of an abandoned industrial plant, Erik (Björn Elgerd) points a camera at himself in order to make a movie for his former lover, Marely, who has broken off their deep relationship.

    Gradually we perceive that Erik, somewhat physically challenged (he seems to have partial nerve damage on his left side), has been amazed in the first place that Marely had fallen in love with him, stood up for him, and protected him from the verbal scorn of others. Over time, however, he came to recognize that their love was real, which provided him with the greatest joy of his young life.

    He expresses of all this to Erik, hoping to lure him back. But it may also be true that, although Erik seems to comprehend a great deal and speaks coherently, he may also be somewhat mentally challenged, given what we soon also discover.

   We observe him stop the filming midway as a car drives up. He gets in momentarily to suck the driver off, clearly being paid for providing the brief pleasure to the older man, holding up the currency for the camera to see when the car pulls away. When he sits down again before the camera, he makes clear that he knows that Marely has left him just for such acts, believing that he has been unfaithful. But Erik doesn’t see it that way.

     Erik, we discover, has long wanted a child and since Marely had been strongly against surrogacy from third-world countries were women are forced to undergo such pregnancies for money, he had been trying to raise enough money to pay for a willing surrogate mother from the middle class of the USA.

     Still, he has been afraid to tell all this to his lover for fear of what precisely has happened, that he would lose Marely’s love and be sent away.

      If Erik’s logic seems warped, he still sees some things quite clearly, as when he points out that he doesn’t feel like a commodity in prostituting himself since he is doing it for a cause that would give joy to them both, becoming parents. And if Marely feels that in choosing to do such a thing he has been disloyal to him, then he too must see him as a commodity, someone whom he bodily controls. His logic may be someone twisted, but he is also correct in his assessment. Isn’t the demand of monogamy a kind of sanctioned control, a demand to be the slave of another?

     Erik points out, in his twisted logic, that he has also donated sperm to several lesbian couples, so that perhaps he already is an unknown father. And he is happy that he has been able to provide these couples with what they need to discover the joy of parental love. He holds up a picture of two women for which he has donated sperm.

     Again, he begs for Marely’s return, now in tears.

     In the last scene of his film, we discover the device on which he has been filming this plea is a drone which he now sets into aerial motion so that Marely will be able to see the words he has written out over the parking lot of this desolate factory, where he now also may be living: “Jag älskar dig” (“I love you).

     In a strange mix of perversity, preposterousness, and an emotionally moving plea to have love return, Erik makes his case. And we feel moved by him, and wish that only Marely will watch this ridiculous valentine, forgive him, and return.

     No matter what Erik has made a strange case not only for his desire to be loved but to able to give love, since he promises that with or without his former companion, he plans to adopt a child. Whether or not that can truly come to be, we don’t know. But clearly in his world, miracles can happen.

 

Los Angeles, February 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).

 

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