Girls blow bubbles from an apartment window. People in a bus queue debate over what day of the week it is. Pith-helmeted colonial troops lead African captives into a giant copper-horned drum that rotates and makes music once the people inside are being roasted alive. Nobody asks “Is it about a bicycle?” But it wouldn’t look out of place.

A Pigeon Sat in a Branch Reflecting on Existence is the final instalment of a trilogy that began in 2000 with Songs From the Second Floor. Episodic, doleful, surreal, laugh-out-loud funny and poignantly human, Roy Andersson’s fifth feature is told in muted colours (excluding an unusual preponderance of redheads), post-Tati slapstick and a rooted camera.

Is there a plot? Of sorts, yes. Two down-at-heel party favour salesmen – Sam (Nils Westblom) and Jonathan (Holger Andersson) – who morosely inform potential clients that they are in the entertainment business, provide an agreeable Swedish alternate for Vladimir and Estragon. The salesmen's shenanigans and bouts of melancholy form a through- narrative in a project that can feel as encyclopaedic as Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow.

Elsewhere the film falls back on its 37 static shots to provide cohesion between over- amorous dance instructors, poetry-reciting children and Charles XII’s ambitious 18th-century forays into Russia. The effect is panoramic. All human life is here. Many scenes are as moving as they are droll.

A big canvas merits such big themes as joy or imperialism. But Andersson's beautifully contrarian house-style brings jouissance to the party too. Everything about Pigeon is playful. Under the deadpan, there's every conceivable emotion. The kitchen-sink realism is actually set-bound and masks sneaky absurdist tendencies. Still life? Hardly.