Cool Icelandic chic

>> 101 Reykjavik offers chilly existential hilarity

by MATTHEW HAYS

As the central figure in Baltasar Kormakur’s directorial debut, 101 Reykjavik, Hilmir Snaer bares more than a passing resemblance to the troubled québécois protagonists at the heart of such recent films as Left Side of the Fridge and Un crabe dans la tête.
Stuck in frosty weather, unable to connect with other humans on certain key levels—the neuroses are all here, and in full bloom. Snaer, an already-seasoned Icelandic actor at age 30, plays a repressed slacker, who sleeps in at mom’s place, gathers social security cheques and heads out to the swinging downtown bar circuit every night. It can’t be all that rewarding, and it’s not, but Snaer doesn’t care. He spouts lines in voiceover like, “Life is a break from death,” and “I must be sexually retarded.” Oh, the perils of living in a freezing country like Iceland while suffering such existential angst!
If 101 Reykjavik were entirely along these lines, it’d be pretty insufferable stuff—the plight of motionless slackers can get dreary fast, after all. But the film’s source material—Hallgrimur Helgason’s best-selling novel—is strong enough to be taking us into new ground, fast. Snaer, whose sex life does seem rather stunted, snags a new babe, a house guest of his mother’s. Played by Spanish actress Victoria Abril, she’s a fiery, sexy thing, and when the two land in bed, fireworks go off to rival those in an Icelandic New Year’s eve sky. Sooner than anyone can say Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Snaer learns the truth: Abril is his mother’s girlfriend. His mother, played by Hanna Maria Karlsdottir, soon has a coming-out chat with Snaer (he had no idea his mom was a dyke prior to this).
Thus the setup is rife with comic possibilities, one the filmmaker cleverly mines without forcing his actors to chew up the scenery. There are elements of farce, certainly, but thankfully the volume is never turned up to 11. Abril, of course, is perfect as the instigator of sexual no-goodness. She found herself in another nuclear-family-challenging scenario in Gazon maudit, the French hit about Abril (playing a repressed and unhappy housewife) finding true happiness in the arms of a dyke plumber (played by Josiane Balasko). (Tellingly, that film was released in the U.S. under the title French Twist, with virtually all of its het-challenging ending ripped out in some horrid editing hack job by the studio.)
Rather than play up the farce to insipid levels, Kormakur offers a vision of young life in Iceland that I suspect Canadians generally and Montrealers specifically will be able to relate to. Snow, repressed sex, slackers, odd familial relations and more snow—why, it’s all here! 101 Reykjavik is an hilarious, sexy, odd little gem of a movie, a pleasure best viewed in a warm cinema, seen with someone you like to both laugh and cuddle with. :

101 Reykjavik opens Friday, Jan. 11 at Cinéma du Parc