I love how the movie treats the themes with delicacy. At some parts of the movie, you just think the characters are probably insane, but they are really captivating, well developed. The best parts about it are: the music, the characters, the silences, and the themes.

It is a surprising movie. You start watching it thinking it will be some sort of creepy romance with, hopefully, a romantic ending, but it turns out to be so much more than that. It is funny because it shows an entirely different view of people, what we can expect from them, how we love and even the horrible situations we endure for loved ones.

I highly recommend it.

Swedish AUTO (2006) *** Lukas Haas, January Jones, Lee Weaver, Chris Williams, Mary Mara, Tim De Zarn, Brianne Davis.

Lukas Haas made his screen debut some 20 years ago as the innocent Amish boy who witnesses a brutal murder in the Harrison Ford drama, "WITNESS" and since then has made an impressive indie film career playing all sorts of characters - good and evil - with his soulful, expressive eyes doing most of the acting. In this small, modest and deceptively winning film he continues to do some of his finest work.

As the introspective, quiet auto mechanic specializing in Volvo repairs (invoking the innocuous title),Haas' Carter is a lonely, yet inquisitive sort who has no friends and family to speak of outside of his kindly elderly employer Leroy (Lee Weaver) and his son Bobby (Chris Williams) who share their luncheons with Carter at the local diner where Carter is secretly falling in love with the comely waitress Darla (January Jones) who is apparently unaware of her beau-in-waiting.

During his many empty evenings Carter follows and spies on the beautiful and equally quiet Darla unbeknownst of her would-be paramour who is also beguiled by a neighbor who plays enchanting violin. Carter can barely summon a conversation with anyone let alone express his desires and mulls his misery in silence.

When Carter sees an older man making illicit moves on Darla he presents her with a lovely gift - an assortment of Christmas lights on a clothes-hanger outside her window - prompting her to confront him. What Carter doesn't know is that Darla in fact has been following and spying on him! The two lonely hearts start a tender, odd romance while they have to deal with such issues as Darla's addict mother Pam (Mary Mara) whose junkie influences of morphine makes her a prisoner to her boyfriend Shelley (Tim De Zarn),who is dying and her connection to the drug, while making things painful for Darla's conflict of keeping watch on her mother's dwindling health while putting up with Shelley's streak of sadism. Carter meanwhile works out his frustrations by restoring a vintage Volvo, pipe dreaming of escaping from the idyllic little hamlet with Darla, but things are about to change drastically causing the couple to seriously dwell on their immediate futures.

Written and directed by novice filmmaker Derek Sieg, who has a career in film production - and according to the press kit provided confirms this as a semi- autobiographical work, makes a gentle film come alive with skillful modulation of maintaining character development and has a painterly viewpoint with a beguiling production design by Ruth DeJong, Richard Lopez' cinematographic palette of bruised blue/green/black schisms evoking the characters romantic melancholy and a keen editing job by Daniel A. Valverde (I was impressed how the climactic confrontation between Bobby and Carter framed the former out of frame suggesting more menace than in their conversation). The acting is universally solid with Haas giving a poignant performance equally balanced by Jones, a genuine surprise perhaps best known as Barry Pepper's long-suffering young bride in last year's "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", makes Darla an empathetic yet smart character fully realized by the film's end.

Sieg echoes the work of Terrence Malick and new indie fave David Gordon Green and uses his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia to full effect making a unique and sweet film that should be sought out.

'Swedish Auto' opens with a slow camera pan across the backyard of a Charlottesville auto-repair shop until the screen is filled with the image of a young greasy-haired loner sitting in the rusting hulk of a vintage Volvo. This is Carter - who needs no further introduction because Indie fans will have met his outsider cousins in numerous other micro-budget movies. Carter's life follows a regular routine - he rises early in his shack beside the railroad tracks before heading off to his job as an auto mechanic. At lunch-break Carter frequents a diner where he gazes longingly at pert waitress Darla, whom he lacks the courage to approach. Carter's eccentricities come into full bloom at dusk - after shutting up the workshop, he stalks a beautiful young violinist from UVA's music school back to her apartment, and watches the girl's practice sessions until she retires for the night.

Eventually Carter gets around to stalking Darla back to her own home, where he observes her being terrorized by her junkie mother's abusive boyfriend - and in due course Darla and Carter embark on a lukewarm romance. This new development leaves writer/director Derek Sieg struggling to keep his clichéd clunker on the road as Carter begins restoring the vintage Volvo to a gleaming ride fit for an oddball prince and his waitress princess. Unfortunately, tedium and implausibility result in total engine seizure long before the film's road-trip conclusion.