Hlynur Pálmason explores a family’s slow breakup with enticing imagery, and a distinctly offbeat sense of humor
A nightly attack by a giant rooster. An animate – and possibly attractive – archery target. A goose’s deadly revenge on a human egg thief. These surreal scenarios provide the odd mix of sarcasm, symbolic subtext, and sober style that will have audiences wondering what they are watching. The pragmatic answer: Hlynur Pálmason’s fifth feature. It is now screening among Karlovy Vary’s Special Screenings section, after premiering earlier this year in Cannes. There, its canine character, Panda, won the Palm Dog Award – something the Icelandic director explicitly hoped for. This coincidence fits the film’s slight magic-realist touch. These sometimes fateful, sometimes fairytale-like elements remain ambivalent enough to account as dream sequences or chance within a realist story.
Roughly following the course of one year, it shows the breakup of a married couple with three kids. Pálmason’s own children portray the trio: twin brothers Grímur and Þorgils (Grímur and Þorgils Hlynsson), and their older sister Ída (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir). Their roles slowly expand, occasionally sidelining their parents’ falling-out-of-love. Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) is an unsuccessful artist, going from abstract prints to landscape pieces. Magnus (Sverrir Gudnason) is a fisherman, openly admitting to his mates that sometimes he does know her, sometimes he doesn’t. An absurdist allegorical scene illustrates how Magnus feels dwarfed by her: During a picnic with the kids, he looks up her skirt along enormous legs, her skirt engulfing him like an endless shower curtain.
The deadpan mix of black humor, drama, and existentialist musings is full of weird moments. Many of them reveal personal insecurities, unfulfilled longing, and gloom underneath the upbeat mood. Shot by Pálmason himself on 35 mm, the visuals evoke an emotionally distanced, melancholic mood. Documentary-style images of nature and everyday life reveal a painterly poetry, with icy blues, rusted oranges, and earthy tones dominating the palette. The intentionally uneventful plot trades dramatic urgency against archaic atmosphere. Long takes, static frames, and natural lighting highlight the beauty of the Icelandic landscape while simultaneously showing its harshness. Here, humans and nature are still one. At least that is suggested by closeups of berry-picking, mushroom plucking, and fishing.
The scenery becomes an additional character, arguably one that’s more interesting than Anna and Magnus. At least their lack of any romantic or intellectual chemistry makes their separation plausible. Pálmason treats the corrosion of mutual feelings with a refreshing absence of sentimentality. In the very first scene, demolition workers tear into the roof of a house: A radical analogy for the collapsing family structure. The constant comparison with the nature’s cycle of growth, death, and decay defines the break-up not as a tragic event but rather an organic process, making room for something new. Visual echoes – match cuts between objects or recurring locations – link moments across time, creating a subtle rhythm.
Time unfolds slowly – sometimes very slowly – as seasons and emotions shift. But this is a subtly tender tale that, just like nature, needs its time to grow on its audience.
- OT: Ástin sem eftir er
- Director: Hlynur Pálmason
- Year: 2024
