A remote, wildly beautiful – and wonderfully shot – Icelandic village is the setting for this soulful, indulgent story of teen angst and teen sexuality, which is a feature debut for Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson. Thor (Baldur Einarsson) and Kristján (Blær Hinriksson) are best friends whose home lives are both fracturing. Thor’s mother has been abandoned by her husband for a younger woman and she is not-so-secretly despised by Thor’s older, callous sisters. Kristján’s father is an obnoxious and homophobic bully. The boys make vague and maladroit attempts at romantic connections with girls, but the resulting quartet’s truth-or-dare adventures at same-sex kissing alert Thor and Kristján to another possibility: that they themselves are in love. It’s a long movie whose suppressed emotions hiss and steam like geysers and just occasionally there is something a little softcore about it: perhaps Larry Clark himself might have taken an interest in these semi-clad teens hanging out, together with the inevitable older male bullies, whose revolting behaviour is there to underline the importance and authenticity of Kristján and Thor and their feelings. Some tighter editing was needed, not merely in terms of length but in giving more emphasis to the older generation and to Thor’s sisters. But it is a fervent, intensely acted drama.
