This reminds me a bit of French family dramas with skeletons in the closet revealed amidst festive holiday get-togethers. But Director Baltasar Kormakur's Icelanders are decidedly on the wild side, corrupt, and often sloppy drunk. Their dialogue is sharp and rough, their language biting and crude, their behavior violent.
The story is a bit familiar with the head of a fishing family getting old and worrying about the business he has built. Currently running it is his elder son who does not inspire confidence. In fact, he frequently goes against the old man's wishes. But it soon becomes clear that the old man has lost his judgment and is living in the past, and it is he who is detrimental to the company's bottom line.
Plot point one is the return of the favorite son with his pregnant girl friend. This is the son who should be running the company, the patriarch believes. However the son has no interest in living out his life in the fishing village and neither does his girl friend. The girl friend is the objectifying element in the story, and we are compelled to see the story from her point of view.
Also returning are the daughter and her husband. Together she and the older son conspire to wrest control of the company from the father...and then all hell breaks loose.
Complicating matters is the fact that Kristin, the favorite son's old girl friend (and half-sibling), is still madly in love with him and won't let him go.
What makes this work is a steamy script with some laugh-out-loud moments, and a careful, atmospheric direction that shows a way of life that is familiar but distant. This is ultimately a story about the encroachment of the modern world on an Icelandic fishing village. It could be a fishing village anywhere.
See this for Baltasar Kormakur, a film maker of promise.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)
The story is a bit familiar with the head of a fishing family getting old and worrying about the business he has built. Currently running it is his elder son who does not inspire confidence. In fact, he frequently goes against the old man's wishes. But it soon becomes clear that the old man has lost his judgment and is living in the past, and it is he who is detrimental to the company's bottom line.
Plot point one is the return of the favorite son with his pregnant girl friend. This is the son who should be running the company, the patriarch believes. However the son has no interest in living out his life in the fishing village and neither does his girl friend. The girl friend is the objectifying element in the story, and we are compelled to see the story from her point of view.
Also returning are the daughter and her husband. Together she and the older son conspire to wrest control of the company from the father...and then all hell breaks loose.
Complicating matters is the fact that Kristin, the favorite son's old girl friend (and half-sibling), is still madly in love with him and won't let him go.
What makes this work is a steamy script with some laugh-out-loud moments, and a careful, atmospheric direction that shows a way of life that is familiar but distant. This is ultimately a story about the encroachment of the modern world on an Icelandic fishing village. It could be a fishing village anywhere.
See this for Baltasar Kormakur, a film maker of promise.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)