Stars: Victoria Abril, Hilmir Snaer Gudnason, Hanna Maria Karlsdottir, Baltasar Kormakur, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Thruder Vilhjalmsdottir

Director: Baltasar Kormakur

Summary: A lad who lives with his mother refuses to grow up and has no inclination to explore the outside world. But life is not planned and he finds himself in a predicament of having slept with his mother's girlfriend... Black comedy.

Baltasar Kormakur's 101 REYKJAVIK is a crowd-pleasing comedy that gleefully takes the concept of "family dysfunction" to an outrageous new level. Hlynur (Hilmer Snaer Gudnason), an unmotivated Icelander with no interests other than watching porn and getting drunk, still lives at home with his sympathetic mother. He has a brief fling with the beautiful Hofy (Thrudur Vilhjalmsdottir), but is too numb to pursue it on any genuine level. The arrival of his mother's friend Lola (Victoria Abril) changes all of that, however. Lola, a flamenco dancer who oozes sexuality, has decided to spend the Christmas holiday at their house. But when Mom leaves to visit a relative on New Year's Eve, the subsequent celebration results in a seemingly unavoidable tryst between Hlynur and Lola. Nothing wrong with that, Hlynur figures; that is, until Mom returns and shares some news that puts a new twist on recent events, throwing Hlynur's life into even greater confusion.
Kormakur's refreshing directorial debut, based loosely on a novel by Hallgrimur Helgason, deals with controversial issues in a lighthearted yet matter-of-fact way. Adding to the visual festivities is the film's soundtrack, a collaboration between Blur's Damon Albarn and ex-Sugarcubes member Einar Oorn Benediktsson, which cleverly reworks The Kinks' classic "Lola" in endlessly different fashions.

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Modern-day Iceland is terminally weird, if writer-director Baltasar Kormákur's debut film 101 Reykjavíkis anything to go by. Our guide to this particular Icelandic saga is Hlynur, 28-year-old unemployed slacker and one-man Nordic-gloom factory; "I'll be dead after I die. I was dead before I was born. Life is just a break from death," he muses. After his gut-freezingly boring family Christmas dinner--whose highpoint is watching a video of last year's ditto--you can see his point. Distraction, and a welcome dose of Southern warmth, comes in the form of his mother's flamenco teacher Lola (the delicious Victoria Abril). Only after sleeping with her does he discover that she's not just Mum's teacher, but her lover as well.

A little like Pål Sletaune's 1997 Norwegian postie-comedy Junk Mail, 101 Reykjavíkgets a lot of lugubrious fun from its protagonist's sheer social and emotional ineptitude--though to give Hlynur his due, most of his mates seem equally clueless, (the women, as so often in this kind of movie, come off rather better). We've been here before, of course--as a male with a severe case of delayed adolescence is gradually brought to engage with adulthood--but the offbeat humour and eccentric details of Kormákur's film keep it fresh and engaging. Whether--in view of remarks like "Reykjavík is like some backwater in Siberia, with glaciated diarrhoea,"--it will do much for the Icelandic tourist trade is another matter!

On the DVD:Filmographies for Kormákur, Abril, and lead male actor Hilmir Snaer Gudnason; subtitles and menu; and the theatrical trailer, which contains snatches of several scenes evidently cut from the final release. The sound is clean and immediate (score co-composed by Damon Albarn) and the widescreen print preserves the original 16:9 ratio. --Philip Kemp

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	Icelandic
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Animated And Scored Interactive Menus, Scene Access, Trailer, Filmographies
Subtitles:	English
Year:	2000
Release Date:	May 19, 2003
Runtime:	85 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	M T D 5045
Keywords:	Subtitled, Comedy, General, Wide, Screen, Reykjavik
Genre:	Comedy