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The film begins with Noi digging himself out of a snow-bound house. The larger problem of how he can dig himself out and away from small-town life in which entertainment consists of playing colour Mastermind with the local bookseller and occasionally robbing the town’s fruit machine for money for a bottle of malt beer, is one that remains to vex him. School isn’t the answer. His boredom is such that he eventually just sends a tape recorder into lessons in case he misses anything important. He’s expelled for his pains. His Elvis-doting father isn’t much help either; he’s lost between vodka and singing rubbish versions of ‘In the Ghetto’ in a miserable karaoke bar. A new waitress in the local café does seem to offer an opportunity and they strike up a liaison of sorts. It’s no great romance however; the film’s most tender moment is Noi teaching Iris how to inhale smoke from a cigarette, but perhaps this is the key to why the film sticks in the mind so, built as it is out of the oddments and overlooked details of daily existence. As for the possibility of escape, at one point Noi and Iris find themselves facing a wall map of the world with buttons to light up various countries. Poor old Iceland doesn’t even have a light.

It’s a film that feels like a comedy, though goodness only knows why. There’s hardly a positive event or interaction throughout and it ends in tragedy and possibly madness. The humour itself is so deadpan that it scarcely resembles humour at all. There are some nice touches though; the mechanic fortune-teller so distressed that he can see nothing but death in Noi’s coffee grounds, unaware that Noi has just taken a job digging graves in the local cemetery, being just one.

The denouement comes with a lurch that shifts the film into the metaphysical with a queasy air of mystery. The ending itself is poised between blessed release and hopeless dreams. It is as the director says, ‘open to interpretation’.

 

Graeme Hobbs on 12th May 2004
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