There's a tradition in northern European cinema of quirkily deadpan films about idiosyncratic people. You, The Living shares common ground with that tradition, but writer-director Roy Andersson parts company with it in his dark misanthropic tone and despairing prognosis: the characters here may be quaint, but for the most part they're not likeable. And they're doomed.

There are no central characters here: everyone is equally important (or, more to the point, equally insignificant) - though some people reappear in a few of the fifty-odd scenes. What we have instead is a succession of vignettes, constructed mostly via single angle wide-shots and with very few camera movements. The effect, when coupled with subdued lighting, is eerie, painterly and very distinctive.

Just as the whole film lingers unsettlingly in one's mind, so do many of its disparate parts: a sad girl in a decrepit bar fantasises about marriage to a rock guitarist...a primary school teacher breaks down in class because her husband called her a hag...a Middle Eastern barber retaliates against an obnoxious customer by shaving an unsightly "parting" through the middle of his hair...and a man dreams that he gets the electric chair for breaking the crockery in a failed trick at a dinner party.

You, The Living takes its title from Goethe - "Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warm bed, before Lethe's ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot" - with Lethe being the river of forgetfulness which the dead cross en route to Hades. It's not an entirely cheery thought, but this is a rich mix of pessimism, poignancy and humour. It's definitely worth seeing.