Be careful who you let live in your house. That’s the moral of “The Bargain,” the film adaptation of Stefan Ahnhem’s novel of the same name.
Artist Adam (Jakob Oftebro) and his wealthy American wife, Scarlett (Emma Appleton), are given a fancy house in the Stockholm archipelago. The ruthless businessman Carl (Fares Fares) and his pregnant wife, Helene (Frida Gustavsson), who live there, take over Adam and Scarlett’s stately home in Sicily.
But “The Bargain” really doesn’t do a good job of advertising services and apps where people can swap houses with each other. Rats in the pool, nosy neighbours and intrusive surveillance cameras are just the beginning of the story.
You could describe the series as a darker version of that Christmas movie, “The Holiday,” says English actress Emma Appleton, laughing.
Nightmares
Because while Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz each get their own romantic getaway in a foreign land in that film, the mini-vacations in “The Bargain” soon turn into nightmares. Not everything is as it seems.
Unexpected twists are a big part of the plot in “The Bargain,” without giving too much away. The actors liked that. The plot has layers upon layers, and secrets come to light.
For example, Jakob Oftebro’s character, the artist Adam, is dependent on his wealthy wife.
He basically lives on Scarlett’s money, so he may not have the best intentions in the world, he says, smiling.
Many sides
The second couple in the story also has a complex background that comes to light.
It’s always fun to play a character where you believe something about that person and then the other side comes out the further into the series or movie you get, says Fares Fares.
Frida Gustavsson’s character Helene has many more sides than she initially appears to have.
As a female actor, you often play the girlfriend, daughter or wife, and these are often very one-dimensional roles that are there to show that the man is good or that he is worthy of love or that he is a good father, she says and adds:
But Helene has so many other qualities. And it’s really fun to make characters who have many different sides.
“The Bargain” will be released on Netflix on October 30.
Jakob Oftebro and Frida Gustavsson are also involved in two highly talked-about projects.
Frida Gustavsson is in the fourth season of the TV series “The White Lotus,” which is currently being filmed in France:
“I can’t tell you much, but what I can say is that the new season is about the film industry. So it’s set at the Cannes Film Festival. We’ve filmed mostly in Cannes, but also a little bit in Saint-Tropez. And this year it’s two hotels instead of one.”
Jakob Oftebro has just finished filming Woody Allen’s new film in Madrid:
“I can’t talk about what the film is about, but for me it was a great honour to be a part of it and meet him. It was incredible. He’s an old man, but when he directs, he becomes young again.”
