The classical music is soothing, the cinematography handsome and the acting strong, but the Swedish coming-of-age saga “Simon and the Oaks’’ is burdened with a sappy, soap-opera-ish script. It spans the years 1939 to 1952 and relates the story of Simon (played as an adult by Bill Skarsgård, son of Stellan), whose main interest in life is a large oak tree in his backyard.
Simon grows up in a working-class family that has little interest in the arts to discover that he’s adopted and part Jewish. At school he meets Isak, the son of a wealthy Jewish bookseller who turns Simon on to music, art and books. He also meets Iza (Katharina Schüttler), a young Holocaust survivor who likes to be slapped around while having sex. She and Simon have a brief tryst, but rough sex isn’t his thing.
Directed by Swedish-American Lisa Ohlin, “Simon and the Oaks’’ was a box-office and critical success in Sweden and is being pushed for the foreign-language Oscar here. Knowing that Academy Award voters are turned on by sentimental movies, it could win. But that still would not make it anything more than something best suited to “Masterpiece Theater.’’