Two friends, frustrated traveling salesmen of novelty items named Sam and Jonathan, drag around three crummy products in their sample case. There is also King Charles XII, who stops in at a bar on his way to the battlefield. Thus begins a very odd journey through the funny and tragic existence of mankind.

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Third and final installment in Roy Andersson’s look at what it means to be human, after Songs From the Second Floor and We, The Living. Andersson dishes up a big helping of both the absurd charm of iconoclastic Swedish film and the defiance of his unique and corrosive approach. A new tragicomic variation on the vagaries of life, solitude and living within a society, extremely stylized and radically sober, A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting on Existence (a kooky title that is an ad campaign all in itself) confirms the director is a master. However, it is hard to always remain captivated by this abstruse fable, which is capable of frying your brain with images of a tortured monkey and slavery, even as it puts you to sleep with extremely slow scenes. It is therefore a double-edge sword of an experience.