THE second Scandinavian Film Festival is almost upon us, and with dramas, comedies and thrillers from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland, it’s likely to please most.

I’m talking by phone to Sweden with Finnish-Swedish comedian Bianca Kronlöf, star of “Underdog”, the debut film by Swedish tabloid journalist, Ronnie Sandahl.

In impeccable English, Kronlöf tells me that a more correct translation of “Svenskjävel” would be something like “f…ing Swedes”, a reference to the influx of Swedes into Norway and the altered power balance between the two countries after Sweden’s crash of the 1990s.

She’s an unlikely choice for the role of 23-year-old Dino, who escapes to nouveau?riche Oslo and finds herself in the loop of temporary jobs and bingeing until she talks herself into a job as housekeeper for an ex-tennis star (that’s a Scandinavian in-joke, Norway never had a Björn Borg or Stefan Edberg) and finds herself in a weird love triangle with the father and his teenage daughter.

The setting is contemporary, the era after Norway benefitted from the discovery of North Sea oil, and I’m slightly mystified when the film shows Norwegian yuppies asking: “Who drives the buses? Who cleans the toilets?” and answering: “The Poles, the Filipinos…and the Swedes”.

“As many as 25 per cent of your young people are out of work, so they go to Norway, but nobody helps you find work there,” Kronlöf explains.

For authenticity, the film was made in Oslo with the team all living together in the same house.

Although in the early part of “Underdog” such problems are sketched so that it looks like a socially-oriented story. In her opinion it’s really a story about the power structure between the sexes.

“It’s a small universe inside a bigger one…regarding Sweden and Norway – that is just the setting, so you don’t need to know that much about current politics,” she says.

“You know, a young woman meets an older man, she is working class and she experiences a middle-class house full of expensive things and people talking about things that don’t interest you.

“What I liked about the script was that it wasn’t stereotyped. There are lots of stories about young girls having relationships with older men, but they’re usually told from a male point of view – something sexy – she’s vulnerable, he’s saving her…this script isn’t that simple.

“She comes into a household and creates a small chaos, as an actor, that’s the most superb thing.”

Kronlöf usually plays comedy, using her own material, and says: “I was quite nervous about how the audiences would react to my doing this”.

The rest of the Scandinavian Film Festival is as eclectic as you’d expect. Other movies include the hilarious “Here Is Harold”, a Norwegian road movie about a man who sets out to kidnap the founder of Ikea, the Icelandic drama “Life In A Fish Bowl”, set in Reykjavik on the eve of the country’s 2008 economic meltdown and the Danish Nordic noir film, “The Absent One”, involving a double murder of twins.

The Second Scandinavian Film Festival, Palace Electric, NewActon, July 14-26, Bookings to palacecinemas.com.au