He has made a movie in the form of an endless cocktail party where no one, for a moment, looks truly happy or free, so the audience can’t even get a contact high.

"[7] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily was more positive, writing that "so many sequels stumble in trying to recapture the precise magic of the original, so it is a testament to Moodysson’s imagination and generosity that he convincingly crafts a follow-up which considers how these individuals would have changed over the span of nearly a quarter-century.

The idealism of the 1970s has given way to the pre-millennium tension of the late 1990s, and the writer-director reconvenes his cast to measure the characters’ mental distance from their shared past.

Together 99 doesn’t place any judgments on its protagonists, nor is it snide in charting which of the characters have moved the furthest from the commune’s socialist ethos.

Like any belated sequel, part of the joy of “Together 99” derives from watching older actors inhabit their once-younger characters and capture how age both has and hasn’t changed their core selves.