On the heels of the hit film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the second movie of the Millennium Trilogy arrives on our screens with the final in the Swedish crime series soon to follow. TimeOut talks to the sequel's director.
The Girl Who Played With Fire began as a small local project for Swedish film director Daniel Alfredson. He only realised how international it had become when he heard about a mass of pirated DVD copies in the United States - complete with subtitles.
Now Hollywood is about to offer its usual compliment to foreign language hits - a remake. The first film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is to be directed by David Fincher (of Seven and Fight Club fame) and will possibly star Daniel Craig.
Alfredson has also directed the third film The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the final in the trilogy of thrillers written by Stieg Larsson and published after his death in 2004.
The stories follow Lisbeth Salander, an introverted twentysomething, who dresses in leathers, has a face full of piercings and gothic makeup. Her skills as a computer hacker mask her very troubled upbringing.
In the first of the trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in English) she helps investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) solve decades of mysterious murders. The women turn out to be the victims of calculated rape, torture and murder motivated by a father and son's Nazi beliefs.
The tragic layers of Lisbeth's past are stripped away in the second instalment, The Girl Who Played With Fire, as Mikael tries to defend her innocence after the media connects her to a spate of new murders. Again, it's a gruesome mystery-thriller with strong Nazi themes.
Larsson was one of the world's leading experts on anti-democratic, right wing extremism movements. As a journalist and editor-in-chief of Swedish magazine Expo, he drew on these influences when penning the books.
Originally, producers felt the distinct tone of each of Larsson's books would be best represented by assigning a different director to each film adaptation. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was assigned to Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, and Alfredson was brought on for the second, The Girl Who Played With Fire.
In the end Alfredson was also tasked with directing the final instalment when producers realised it was really a continuation of the second story.
Alfredson began filming two years ago on the back of the sensation of the novel series in Scandinavia.
Swedish readers hailed Lisbeth as their new-age national heroine, an updated version of their more innocent Swedish mascot Pippi Longstocking.
Alfredson says Larsson's Swedish original clearly hints to Pippi, who like Lisbeth was an unconventional girl with a clear sense of justice.
He says he has noticed Swedes in particular becoming more like the character Lisbeth - individual, determined, and possibly gothic.
"I think that's something [Larsson] wanted to say, [Sweden's] not as innocent as it was in those times."
Funding was initially granted to turn the novel into a Swedish television series, and this then helped finance the feature films. Both directors shot the series and features simultaneously.
For Alfredson this meant juggling two scripts - shooting scenes for the television series that weren't in the feature film and vice versa.
Then during filming, the books sold 21 million copies in 40 countries - if only they had predicted what would happen when the novels were translated. Too late, the producers realised they were dealing with a phenomenon.
Alfredson sighs when he says that if they had known the novels were going to be so successful overseas they might have given them more of a budget.
Still, he was grateful for the opportunity to present more of the book on screen through the TV series, as so much has to be left out in the process of turning the novel into a feature film.
"All three books are very thick in Swedish - they are 600 pages or something - so you have to make tough choices.
"Of course there are things we would have liked to have put in there, but in the end we decided to stick to Lisbeth and Mikael's story. The main choice was to make it more about these two, not go in another direction, keep close to them."
For example, the second novel The Girl Who Played With Fire opens with Lisbeth returning from her travels with a breast enhancement. The procedure does not feature in the film.
"But there are actually some scenes in the feature film that are not in the TV series, so it works both ways," Alfredson explains.
His film adaptation of The Girl Who Played With Fire narrows in on Lisbeth, and Mikael becomes the secondary character who is determined to bring her justice. Alfredson says he intentionally made the film Lisbeth's.
"There's a mystery in Lisbeth's past and that's actually the main story, that's what intrigues us as viewers or readers. I think we want to know all about Lisbeth. And Mikael, we have seen him before and we know him. He's a journalist trying to do his job and so on. But Lisbeth is a character you want to know the truth about because she's carrying the secrets, she's the most interesting character."
It's also noticeably more graphic, which Alfredson admits was his influence, though the first film didn't exactly lack for violence (its censorship certificate was elevated to R18 from R16 after complaints to the censor's office).
Alfredson realises the film does not exactly sell his country to the world, but then again, that was never its intention.
"When we were shooting, [Larsson] was just another Swedish author. It was a small project, the success is more of a bonus really."
LOWDOWN
What: The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the second and third films based on the Millennium Trilogy novels by Stieg Larsson, directed by Daniel Alfredson
When and Where: The Girl Who Played with Fire has advance screenings this weekend and opens July 29; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest opens in December
Trivia: Having made more than $1.2 million at the New Zealand box office since its release, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is one of the highest-grossing foreign language movies locally.
