iceland again? i wanted to see white night wedding (imdb) because it was directed by baltasar kormákur, the director of 101 reykjavik. "white night" ended up being pretty different from "101". but for all it's problems i basically liked it.
while "101" takes place in reykjavic, "white night" takes place on the opposite end of the country, a remote island off the northern coast. we meet jon, a professor planning to marry thora, a former student who is 18 years his junior. interspersed with scenes of the day leading up to the wedding are flashbacks to jon's prior life, when he moved to the island to care for his mentally ill wife anna. while there is some light touches in both story lines, story A (the day before the wedding to thora) has a lot more drunken hijinks than story B, which revolves around the disintegration of jon's marriage with anna and the beginning of his romance with thora.
there is a nominally happy ending when the two stories eventually reach their thematic intersection at the end. but by then i was rooting for them to call the wedding off. while jon was supposed to be a character preoccupied with guilt and regret, he just came across as uncaring and bland. i honestly didn't see what thora saw in him. cg attributed that to bad acting, and maybe that's all it was.
despite it's problems, i still thought it was an entertaining film. there are some genuinely funny bits. while the serious plot line seemed a little flat, the film's sense of humor made it worth seeing.
meanwhile, i recognized Ólafía hrönn jónsdóttir (well, her face, not her name) from back soon. there can't be too many icelandic actresses. if anything it's surprising that more didn't overlap.
UPDATE (4/5/09): glomarization was also at the screening, her review of the film is here.
