Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.08.2016, Blaðsíða 42

NORDIC DESIGN FOR CHILDREN
FROM 1900 TO TODAY
OPEN EVERY DAY
FROM 11AM–17PM
CENTURY
OF THE CHILD
Sturlugata 5, 101 Reykjavík
www.nordichouse.is
“It’s a film about two families that
are forced to spend time togeth-
er,” ‘Country Wedding’ director
Valdís Óskarsdóttir explained
to the Grapevine in 2008. “They
can stand each other for one hour
but they get lost and instead of
one hour, they are together for five
hours. Then things start to pop up.”
At a wedding, people of all ages,
from all walks of life, united by
nothing but arbitrary yet profound
ties of blood, gather together to
work their emotions up to a fever
pitch. In one of cinema’s purest ex-
amples of the wedding-film genre,
‘Country Wedding’ invites more
than a dozen of Iceland’s best-
known contemporary actors to
one place, and loads them up with
repressed sexual yearnings, vio-
lent urges, buried secrets, feuds,
affairs, and general mayhem.
It’s a bad sign when the groom
shows up the morning of his nup-
tials with his head shaved; mat-
ters are not improved by unreli-
able friends, unwanted relatives,
and unexpected detours. The wed-
ding party is heading out of town
in two busses—one for his family,
one for hers, and both contribut-
ing to the generally carnivalesque
atmosphere—but the groom’s
deep and abiding fear of tunnels
forces them to take the long way
around Hvalfjörður. The caravan
is looking for “a white church with
a red roof” but the priest who’s set
to preside is too distracted by a
can of lager and a football game to
give good directions.
‘Country Wedding’ is perhaps
the most successful film by the
Vesturport theatre company.
Founded in 2001 by a collective in-
cluding future Hollywood charac-
ter actors Ólafur Darri Ólafsson,
and Gísli Örn Garðarsson, Ves-
turport became known for con-
ceptually ambitious productions,
touring internationally with ad-
aptations of Büchner’s ‘Woyzeck’
and Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ fea-
turing music by Nick Cave and
Warren Ellis. The company’s ex-
perimental, egalitarian approach
extends to their films, ensemble
works with deep casts and unpre-
dictable moods, beginning with
Ragnar Bragason’s black-and-
white companion films ‘Children’
(2006) and ‘Parents’ (2007), fea-
turing loosely connected stories
of urban life, sometimes gritty
and sometimes darkly comic.
‘Country Wedding’ and ‘King’s
Road’ (2010), also directed by
Valdís Óskarsdóttir, about the
flamboyantly lost souls populat-
ing a trailer park, feel more like
plays, with constrained settings
and actors bouncing off each oth-
er like charged particles. They’re
similar to the films of the Eng-
lish director Mike Leigh, which
he develops through one-on-one
character-based improv with his
cast, so that each character comes
across as at once a potential larg-
er-than-life gravitational center,
and a piece of the overall narrative
plan. Likewise, Valdís worked on
the story of ‘Country Wedding’ in
individual rehearsals with each ac-
tor, independently developing the
characters’ backstories, person-
alities, and the buried secrets—one
for everyone—which would inevi-
tably “start to pop up” once the cast
was unleashed on each other.
How to watch: SAMFilm’s
Icelandic DVD, with English sub-
titles, is available from Amazon.
co.uk and from many Reykjavík
libraries.
SHARE:
gpv.is/cnt13
Words MARK ASCH
“Then things start to pop up.”
‘Country Wedding’
Movies Saga of Icelandic Cinema
@bioparadis/bioparadis @bioparadis @bioparadis
s
Full schedule at www.bioparadis.is
42The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 13 — 2016