Showing On 30 November, 2, 3 December
Monday 6:00pm, Wednesday 4:00pm and 6:30pm, Thursday 6:00pm
Watch The Trailer
Storyline (warning: spoilers)
There’s a raft of cinematic conventions for depictions of marriage breakdowns. We expect scenes of kitchen-based recriminations and circular arguments that go nowhere, lots of chest-beating and showily anguished acting, and a lachrymose score of minor key piano. But the Icelandic writer and director Hlynur Pálmason takes a novel approach.
This delicate, playfully experimental collage picture, set over a year in the lives of recently separated artist Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and her trawler fisherman husband Magnús (Sverrir Gudnason), plus their three children, is a blend of the fatalistic and the fantastic. It’s a story that acknowledges the sadness of endings, but is simultaneously, as the title suggests, infused with the bittersweet affection that endures between the two. It’s also unexpectedly weird.
The patchwork of glimpses of the quotidian – the family dog, Panda, rolling in something stinky and unmentionable, Anna helping her father replace fences on his land – is punctuated by moments of surreal fantasy: a giant rooster prowls through the house at one point.
The film it is rich with poetic visual symbolism. The Icelandic countryside is both an arrestingly photographed backdrop and a playground for the imaginations of the characters. It’s clearly a personal work for the director. While it is not his story or his marriage depicted, the film features his children, his earthy, organic artworks and his shamelessly scene-stealing dog.