101 Reykjavík (2000)
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Nudity Rating:
Genres: Comedy, Romance
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
MPAA Rating:
Release Date: 1 June 2000 (Iceland)
Country: Iceland | Denmark | France | Norway | Germany
Clips courtsey of: Thanks to original artist.
Synopsis
Thirty-year-old Hlynur still lives with his mother and spends his days drinking, watching porn and surfing the net while living off unemployment checks. A girl is interested in him, but he stands back from commitment. His mother's Spanish flamenco teacher, Lola, moves in with them for Christmas. On New Year's Eve, while his mother is away, Hlynur finds out Lola is a lesbian, but also ends up having sex with her. He soon finds out he and his mother are sharing more than a house. Eventually he must find out where he fits into the puzzle, and how to live life less selfishly.
Review
At first I thought this would be yet another melancholic Scandinavian
psycho-drama involving a boy and his coming out lesbian mum. The plot is
indeed somewhat along these lines, but there's nothing melancholic let alone
Scandinavian about this funny funny movie.
However this is not exactly a comedy either although it turns out to be
comical enough. Rather it's a slice of life seen through the glasses of an
almost 30 years old drone, brilliantly played by Hilmir Snaer Gudnason,
living off benefits and his far too indulgent mother.
Hlynur the anti-hero sleeps til noon, loafs around at home all day and
drinks all night. Although he manages to sleep with members of the opposite
sex, he can't bear to wake up to them. In other words he's a modern Peter
Pan refusing to grow up -- if you can imagine Peter Pan as an apathetic
chain-smoking sloth in a parka. And he seems fairly content with his simple
non-life until Victoria Abril waltzes in .
The scene where Hlynur's mum confesses her new found sexual direction is
nothing short of wonderful. It has an unerring ring of truth to it: a family
drama played out over a quiet cuppa in the kitchen and it manages to be
moving and hilarious at the same time. In that very scene Gudnason also
shows off his exquisite acting skills: with great restraint and uttering PC
platitudes he betrays the emotional battle raging within. Pathetic yet
sympathetic.
Hlynur is played with just the right blend of indifference, impotence
(although not sexual) and self-pity needed for the part and, though fairly
unsympathetic to begin with, he grows on you as he reveals himself as a lost
little boy. That much of his depressive nerd personality is more or less
kept throughout the whole process is yet another proof of the quality of the
acting and writing in 101 Reykjavik.
All the main actors central to the plot give stellar performances and many
of the marginals too. The music is interesting, scored by our very own Damon
Albarn (of Blur) and Einar the Sugarcube (Bjork's Svengali). I especially
liked the ambient-reggae version of the old Kinks standard
Lola.
Some of the dialogue is in Icelandic which is fine as long as it is
subtitled. Much of it is however in English delivered in a bizarre -- but
fortunately intelligible -- cocktail of Icelandic and Spanish accents.
There are few drawbacks to this flick, the main one being the obligatory
landscape scene of some glacier or lava... I forget. But that's like
criticizing a three star restaurant for a spelling error in the menu. -- The
superb Reykjavik nightlife scenes are however not to be missed and could
well serve as advertisements for Icelandair.
One nice oddity is the nowadays little used narrator voice-over. Well,
actually Hlynur serves more as a commentator to the respective fixes he
finds himself in, deadpan, mordant and hilarious, but rarely explaining much
which the viewer hasn't already divined far better than Hlynur himself ever
will. I suspect that these comments are original quotes from the novel on
which the film is based.
Played out with extremely dry, self-depreciating, almost Jewish humor, the
movie draws to an end as a fairly touching story of familial love disguised
as an adult coming-of-age movie, wrapped inside a black comedy. And as often
enough happens in real life this Gordian knot of personal problems more or
less unravels itself. In a movie however such a solution may seem cheap, but
this one gets away with it as the characters just carry on with their lives
after redefining the nuclear family.
This is the directing debut by actor/director Baltasar Kormakur, who also
wrote the script. Actors do often not make the best directors, but Kormakur
proves to be an exception to that rule. The characters are well developed as
one could expect, but they are not allowed to get in the way of the
storytelling, which relies more on visual details and physical acting than
endless dialogue and over-dramatization. This is doubly impressing
considering the literary origin of the movie.
And maybe this is a clue to why this film works so well: it is uniquely
Icelandic (or should I say Mid-Atlantic), drawing on European and American
filmmaking traditions, thus enjoying the best of both worlds: old and new. I
know it will work in Britain and Europe and the Americans seem to like it as
well judging by the rave review 101 Reykjavik got in Variety and the success
at the influential Toronto film festival.
Nudity overview
Celebrity Name: Hanna María Karlsdóttir
Nudity type:
Timestamp:
Running time:00:00:16
Clip download link: Media:HannaMariaKarlsdottir-101Reykjavik.avi
File Size: 3.4 MB
Size(height x width): 704x384
Have audio: Yes
Bit rate: 1714 kb/s
Scene description:
Celebrity Name: Ingibjörg Gunnarsdóttir
Nudity type:
Timestamp:
Running time:00:01:59
Clip download link: Media:IngibjorgGunnarsdottir-101Reykjavik.avi
File Size: 19 MB
Size(height x width): 704x384
Have audio: Yes
Bit rate: 1332 kb/s
Scene description:
