This year, I got to see a couple of Scandi offerings, a quirky Finnish comedy about two alcoholic sisters and a quiet Icelandic heartbreaker.
I enjoy foreign language comedies, even if I’m never sure how much of the culturally specific humour and references fly over my head. 100 Litres of Gold is the second Finnish comedy I’ve ever seen, and from my admittedly limited experience Finnish humour tends to be dark, laconic and very very dry. This zany black comedy is about the misadventures of two middle-aged sisters, Pirkko and Taina, who live in a ramshackle house in the countryside and seem to stick together mainly because they have nothing else going on in their lives. The one thing they can legitimately brag about is their expertise at brewing sahti, a farmhouse beer that’s a must at Finnish special occasions.
When the third sister Päivi comes down from Helsinki to introduce her fiancé, Pirkko and Taina promise to supply the forthcoming wedding with hundred litres of their finest. The only problem is that the sisters brew a batch so delicious they go on a bender and drink it all themselves. Once they emerge from their alcoholic stupor, Pirkko and Taina only have a few hours to somehow replace the missing sahti. As the wedding draws near, the sisters’ frantic schemes continue to fail hilariously.
Though the film was clearly made with the homegrown audience in mind first and most, the humour was accessible enough to elicit chuckles in my theatre, including one extreme gross-out moment I didn’t see coming. Finnish drinking culture and the sisters’ fractious, borderline toxic relationship are mainly played for laughs, but the movie also finds time for more sober (pun intended) and dramatic moments, especially in the subplot dealing with a past tragic car accident. I liked the comedic performances, unique local flavour and the gorgeous Finnish countryside shot through the warm filters.
How do you deal with a sudden death of a loved one? And how can you grieve when circumstances demand that you hide the true depth of your emotions? Spanning one single day, When the Light Breaks explores the strangeness of the first few hours after a loss, closely following its bereaved heroine Una (Elín Hall), an art student in her early twenties.
Una’s ordinary morning is interrupted with dreadful news: her boyfriend Diddi is killed in the country’s worst-ever traffic disaster. Numb and devastated, Una feels completely alone because of her secret: she and Diddi kept their romantic relationship hidden from their friends and Diddi’s official girlfriend back home. Now girlfriend Klara is in town, and Una must deal with her arrival and watch on as Klara receives the sympathy that Una believes should be hers.
Because the story takes place in Reykjavík, the movie is short on the Icelandic landscape eye candy I loved in other Icelandic films, but it still finds moments of eerie beauty in unexpected places. Early on, there’s a striking sequence following the lights of a tunnel, set to a chilly, haunting soundtrack; later in the film, inventive camera angle makes a church feel magical in a scene where Una shows off her signature piece of performance art. Una’s isolation can be felt through the expressive cinematography alone, even when it’s just the back of her head that’s on screen.
When the Light Breaks is so simple and sparse I’d almost call it a mini-film, and not just because of its tight runtime. Una’s secret is a ticking time bomb, but the script is not really interested in dramatic confrontations, opting instead for a softer, more ambiguous approach as the two women are drawn together by grief despite Una’s reservations. Depending on your taste, this makes the film either admirably restrained, or too gauzy and wispy for its own good. I’d be inclined towards the latter, if it wasn’t for Elín Hall’s quietly intense performance as spiky, tightly wound Una. Her mesmerising face is the one to watch.
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