Roy Andersson is a cult figure in Sweden, though he has managed only three features since 1975. Financed by his legendary TV commercials, they are some of the funniest films ever produced. Songs from the Second Floor, which won the Special Jury Prize two years ago at Cannes, is his breakthrough to an international audience, or at least to those willing to ignore traditional rules of narrative and groove on a series of 46 deadpan, interconnected tableaux, one long-take shot per sequence with a stationary camera.

The intricate images, deep-focus shots of studio-built architecture with people walking through saying and doing mostly opaque things, are kin to Bosch and Brueghel, to Surrealism, to the Theatre of the Absurd, to Jacques Tati, and especially to the Buñuel of 1930’s L’âge d’Or. The Swedish content: many scenes feature hefty middle-aged Swedish men in business suits, though their faces are often painted white, as if they were clowns in a circus, or Japanese kabuki characters. What’s it all about? The deadness of the bourgeoisie? The horror of the human condition? What songs? What second floor? Damned if I know, though what’s on camera is inevitably fascinating and brilliant. The performers are, Andersson has explained proudly, 95 percent amateurs: "Spielberg’s favorite actor, Harrison Ford, began as a carpenter." In Swedish with English subtitles. (98 minutes)