Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.03.2013, Page 18

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18The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 3 — 2013
“How typical,” mumbles Leifur, ‘XL’s’ protagonist as
he attends a performance art exhibition, only to be
shushed by his vacuous date.
“What do you mean?” she asks as the lead man
in the piece produces a man-sized stuffed pink bear,
which he proceeds to eviscerate with a carving knife.
“Oh, you know, ‘art.’ It’s just all so typical. He’s got
that bear, and now he’s stabbing it,” rants the over-
weight, overdrinking MP, not quite drunk but definite-
ly not sober.
“Oh, be quiet. You just don’t know what you’re talk-
ing about.”
Granted, there are times in Marteinn Thorsson’s
film when you can’t help but agree with Leifur. With
its done-to-death melodrama, often needlessly vulgar
dialogue and puerile sex scenes (the movie’s first pe-
nis appears roughly at the ninety-second mark), ‘XL’
expends much of its ammunition on easy targets, but
there’s more than enough good stuff here to elevate it
above the average.
THE GOOD CHUNK
A large chunk of that good stuff stems from Ólafur
Darri Ólafsson. His measured intensity and easygoing
charisma is not only very watchable, but also utterly
believable as he veers from meetings with the Prime
Minister to raucous drunken fuckathons with his twen-
tysomething girlfriend, Æsa. A man who gets away
with this much has to be likable, and Leifur is that in
spades; it is a testament to Ólafur’s simple power that
Leifur basically spends the whole film using and abus-
ing every woman in his life and every form of alcohol
imported to Iceland, and yet one leaves the theatre
thinking he’s basically a decent guy.
The screenplay occasionally gets in his way, with
its forced exposition and emotional shortcomings
typical of Icelandic film, but for the most part, the
dialogue is direct and to the point, and Marteinn pre-
fers to let the camera do most of the explaining, with
plenty of close-ups poring over Ólafur and the host
of competent supporting actors (including the utterly
loathsome Helgi Björnsson playing Eiríkur, an utterly
loathsome friend of Leifur’s; relatively recent discov-
ery María Birta giving a calm and vulnerable perfor-
mance as Æsa; and Þorsteinn Bachmann giving us
his smarmy, shit-eating best as the Prime Minister),
their inner turmoil given voice not with cheesy lines
or monologues, but with quiet sobs and uncertain
blinks.
The cinematography and editing all-too-frequent-
ly stray into overachievement when a simple stroke
would have sufficed, however, spending way too
much time trying to capture the feel of drunkenness
with choppy frames of black spliced haphazardly into
the film’s seemingly endless party scenes. Blurry
hand-held POV shots try all too hard to make you feel
like you’re the idiot reaching for that one last drop
from the bottom of the bottle, and with the exception
of one or two fairly poignant moments of public em-
barrassment, they all fall hopelessly flat.
ALTERED STATESMAN
Many would attest to the film’s strength in depicting,
fairly realistically, the life of a functional alcoholic in
what passes for Icelandic high society: our belea-
guered government. The truth is that individuals like
Leifur can and do exist at every level of Icelandic so-
ciety (although perhaps not quite as passionately in-
dulgent as he is), but that is not what lies at the heart
of ‘XL’s’ message. Rather, it is the fact there is nothing
separating the highest statesman in the land from the
lowest filth vomiting in our gutters. There’s just not
many enough of us around to separate the two, and in
highlighting this, the film does bring to light a certain
uniquely Icelandic state of being, living in that weird
little first-world country where everybody knows ev-
erybody else.
This is perhaps best expressed in Leifur’s encoun-
ter with a cabbie who recognises him as an MP. The
cabbie, played with reliable solidarity by theatre vet-
eran Stefán Jónsson, offers him a can of snuff (the to-
bacco, not the porn). Leifur politely refuses, but offers
the cabbie a swig of his hip flask, which he accepts.
The two share a nice moment, with Leifur confident
that the cabbie might tell friends and family about the
encounter, but he’d never dream of taking it to the
press; it’s just not how things work in this country. It’s
a great little scene, one of the film’s highlights.
ALL THINGS PASS INTO THE NIGHT
As for the rest of it, there’s just not much to work with,
really. Leifur dodges his responsibilities with booze
and a particularly uninspired blackmail scheme, with
the whole thing predictably culminating in some sort
of jail-cell denouement as the soundtrack pitter-pat-
ters away inconspicuously. There are hints of some-
thing darker and more insidiously cruel at work here
and there, especially where Leifur’s relationship with
Æsa is explored, and it is gradually revealed that the
poor girl genuinely has feelings for the lout. A particu-
larly powerful scene comes late in the film where Æsa
breastfeeds a doll, but the resulting confrontation is
stripped of all subtlety by its violent conclusion.
In short, there is promise here, with generous
helpings of darkness, talent, truth and just the right
amount of embellishment, but too much of it feels
forced and hammed-up for it to say much of anything.
The bottom of the bottle has been visited so many
times in film that a revisit needs more than this, some-
how, and a faint feeling of déjà vu never quite escapes
you. - SINDRI ELDON
CONCERT
R E V I E W
FILM
R E V I E W
Here We Go Again:
Marteinn Thorsson’s ‘XL’
FLIM ICE
LAND
Sindri El
don Wat
ches Mo
vies
And Wri
tes Abou
t Them
1
FEBRUARY
? Bíó Paradís on Hverfisgata 54, 101 Reykjavík
Call 412-7711 or go to www.bioparadis.is for more info.
–
This is the first review of an ongoing campaign to train a balanced
critical eye on contemporary Icelandic film. If you find your inter-
est piqued, please take the time to see an Icelandic movie. They’re
usually not half-bad. Don’t ever not see a film just because I said it
sucked, because that’s kind of a stupid thing to do.