Hjartasteinn (Heartstone)

seen at the London Flare Festival on 20 March 2017

Gudmudur Arnar Gudmundsson directs Baldur Einarson as Þór (Thor), Blær Hinriksson as Kristján (Christian), Diljá Valsdóttir as Beta and Katla Njálsdóttir as Hanna in this Icelandic/Danish co-production set in rural Iceland during the long summer days.

Thor and Christian are close friends just emerging into adolescence in a small community which is at one level very safe, but at another very constricting and self-righteous. Thor's parents are separated (if not divorced) and we never see his father, who is Reykjavik; Thor lives with his mother and two older sisters, one of whom has artistic aspirations while the other is a spectacularly angry teenager. Christian is apparently an only child living with quarrelling parents - his father is obviously violent.

While Thor has a crush on Hanna and begins to negotiate the tricky business of engaging with the opposite sex, not particularly helped by the typically snide comments of his peer group and his sisters, Christian finds himself at complete odds with this suffocating milieu as he realsies he has ever stronger feelings for Thor, a situation which seriously imperils their friendship. Only a catastrophe helps to re-establish a fragile bond between them.

The sense of a small self-reliant community is very strong, set in the bare and austerely beautiful Icelandic countryside in summer. There's a strong contrast between the liberating possibilities of inhabiting the natural world - fishing, riding, camping, helping with farm work - and the impending pressures and compromises of adulthood. Thor's mother is criticised by her three very different children in staggeringly judgemental terms when she tries to build a relationship with an older farmer; it's all too easy to see that moral conservatism is bred very early in rural communities, leaving little room for any flexibility or the acceptance of any behaviour beyond the pale of strict norms. No wonder Christian becomes so desperate.

It's a beautifully shot film, with excellent performances from all the young actors, supported by the older generation whose characters are all too plausibly ground down by life's difficulties.