Helgi (Þröstur
Leó Gunnarsson) and his girlfriend Lara (Edda
Heidrún Backman) move to a place in the middle of
nowhere, Iceland, for the summer where he plans to finish writing his
novel, and for some reason, he is also obsessed with shooting a reindeer,
which are rather rare in this region. However, after a few happy days, their summer home turns out to be not exactly the best of
choices, since this was Helgi's childhood home ... where he caught his
mother with another man (a biologist doing a research on reindeers,
actually), something that eventually caused her and Helgi's father to
break up - and to this day, Helgi hasn't quite recovered from this, and
now, being confronted with his unhappy past, Helgi gradually breaks up,
first getting into arguments with Lara over pretty much everything, then
becoming more and more obsessed with reindeer, with his gun, and with
sinking boats he claims to have seen. In the end, Helgi goes totally mad
and when he wants to go on a hunt (though there are probably no
reindeer around as it is), he shoots himself dead - was it an accident, one
wonders. Slow-moving drama of a man's descent into madness, in
front of impressive if depressing Icelandic landscapes ... this all
amounts to not necessarily a great movie, but an ok if at times a little
dull character study carried quite competently by its leads.
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