Una (Elín Hall) and Diddi (Baldur Einarsson) are cool kids and lovers attending art school in Reykjavík, Iceland. He’s tall and good-looking; she’s an elfin variation on Annie Lennox’s androgynous 1980s years.
They have dreams. He wants to visit Japan; the well-travelled Una will settle for the Faroe Islands. As day dawns he promises to break up with his long-distance girlfriend and childhood sweetheart, Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir).
Except he never gets there. En route he falls victim to a dramatic and fatal tunnel explosion. Icelandic flags are later flown at half-mast, an image that gives the same sorrowful quality that WH Auden’s Funeral Blues once brought to Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Rúnar Rúnarsson condenses the funeral experience into a single day in this emotionally astute drama, a much-admired contender at Cannes in 2024. Composed of small gestures and unspoken truths, it’s a bonsai miniature of the vastness of overwhelming grief.
Cannes 2025: Julian Assange makes for unlikely new star, walkouts at warts-and-all Shia LaBeouf film - and Brigitte Bardot is back
When the Light Breaks review: Emotionally astute drama is a bonsai miniature of overwhelming grief
Paul Mescal tries hard but ultimately The History of Sound is way too flimsy
Cannes 2025: An emotional screening of My Mom Jayne, and Kristen Stewart’s ‘big Cannes energy’
A numb, grieving Una watches as various friends and comrades console Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir). They hug the “official” girlfriend and characterise Diddi and Klara as the perfect couple. More poignantly, the sincere, plain-speaking Klara embraces Una as a sister.
Diddi’s bandmate and roommate, Gunni (Mikael Kaaber), is aware of Una’s predicament but cautions Una not to reveal her clandestine romance. Instead the two bereaved women form an uneasy bond of pain, not exactly shared, but similarly lonely.
Hall is a revelation, her blank features signalling multitudes as she tries to get through the day. Her youthful companions rage against suburban motorists, drink shots and dance their way through an unanticipated mourning period.
Sophia Olsson’s cinematography finds poetry whether she’s shooting seedy-looking bars or the majestic Hallgrímskirkja church. The late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s mournful score complements the film’s elegant restraint.
In cinemas from Friday, May 23rd
