Reykjavík A very cold joke from Iceland
I was super obsessed with the films of the Nordic countries last year, especially Danish films. Danish short films used to be very NB, the short film awards of top film festivals like Shana and Oscar are almost always swept up by the students’ work in this country, I have seen a collection of Danish short films, a collection of students’ graduation work from the same school, and it was a jaw-dropping experience. I envy them, regardless of the meaningful content of the attempt, the cost of those short films is at least 3 million yuan each even in our country, which I envy. Denmark has recently produced a female director who has made some very good films, easy to understand, vivid and thoughtful, I have seen two of them, one is “Brother” and the other is “Love Forward”, I like it very much. Norway, Finland and the Netherlands also have good films recently. These countries do not have a so-called long tradition of cinema, no shadow of masters, no constraints and stereotypes, no doctrines and genres, so there are humanistic cinematic gems that transcend genre and art films. There are masters in Scandinavia, namely, Bergman of Sweden. I used to resist this director’s films and went to sleep when I saw them, until one day a friend of mine described to me how he felt when he saw Bergman. He described the sound quality of the music as “the solo of a plucked string instrument”, sometimes soothing, sometimes agitated, sometimes psychedelic, sometimes stagnant, faintly appearing like a sob. Then I tried to continue watching, and it was really interesting. So I think it’s because Sweden has masters that their contemporary cinema lacks a certain sharpness. The first Icelandic film I saw was on Christmas Day, before it started snowing in Beijing, and I escaped a drinking party, turned off the phone and hid in my room, and there was white snow everywhere in this film, so I watched the TV for a white X’mas. But the lead actress looks really beyond my aesthetic range, so it is difficult to empathize, often appear to be “intermittent” phenomenon, it is difficult to get into the scene, and in this film, the director wants the audience to believe that the woman’s charm is the motivation of all the characters, I just can not accept it, sorry. It was cold in my room, and one of the reasons I had a hard time watching it, because Reykjavik is beautiful but presumably cold, so the characters in the film, both men and women, are always drinking hard liquor, and I think I’ll take it out in the summer when the heat gets too much. Thirty-year-old Sinau is still living with his mother in a small apartment, living on unemployment benefits, and spending his days in bars, in addition to reading pornographic web pages. In Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, the snow and wind are constant, and there are few times when the sun rises, but the people living here are optimistic and open-minded, and the bars are full of people seeking excitement every day.
My mother’s Spanish flamenco teacher became a valued guest in the house, a Spanish woman who spoke a rudimentary English and was always awkward in the small apartment with Sinau, a grown man. After a night of partying, the Spanish girl unfortunately becomes pregnant and it is discovered that the girl is her mother’s gay partner! Sinau was plunged into an abyss of distress.
The son is the lover of the “wife”, the “husband” is the mother of the lover, how can the child born of the “wife” live with himself? He was so distressed that he got into trouble with the policeman who read the “meter” and was arrested in the police station. When the newborn baby is baptized, Sinau climbs a snowy mountain alone and collapses in the snow.
Icelandic director Baltasar Kormkur, this is his debut film written and directed by him, the film is dark humor, alternative chic.