Rating: B+
Dir: Benedikt Erlingsson
Star: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jon Johanson, Juan Camilo Román Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson
a.k.a. Kona fer í stríð
This was a real and pleasant surprise, since I wasn’t sure if this would end being too gentle. Whole it’s not going to get any awards for hard-core action, it proved highly satisfying. More impressively, it managed to make my empathize with someone whose views are ones I’d generally disagree with. It takes place in Iceland, where Halla (Geirharðsdóttir) is a middle-aged, single woman, waging a near one-person campaign of sabotage against heavy industry, mostly my disabling the power-lines which supply electricity to it, disfiguring the landscape and exacerbating climate change. It’s a game of cat and mouse, with the authorities keen to stop the eco-terrorist from dissuading foreign investors.
However, Halla has issues of her own, beyond the net closing in on her property destruction. A long-dormant adoption request is suddenly approved, and she can’t risk further criminal acts, as a conviction would bar her from proceeding. She intends to go out with a declaration of her manifesto, literally flung from the Reykjavik roof-tops, and a final act, stealing Semtex to blow up a key electricity pylon. Her accomplice, government employee Baldvin (Ragnarsson) is increasingly concerned about the “one last job” trope, and twin sister Ása (also Geirharðsdóttir), a yoga teacher, threatens to put a spoke in the adoption process too, by vanishing off to India for two years to live with her guru.
It’s charming, quirky and rather subversive, all at the same time. It could easily have toppled over into preachiness, but is leavened with enough humour to keep the messaging secondary to the medium. For example, there’s a poor Spanish tourist (Estrada), who is perpetually getting blamed for the attacks, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading in his tent getting SWATted. There’s also the soundtrack, which shows up on screen as a three-piece band, and a trio of singers, who play whatever music is needed to accompany the scenes (top). Every character is a pleasure, not least the farmer (Johanson) who becomes Halla’s leading accomplice. I will say, any wannabe eco-warriors might well get some helpful tips here, such as the best place to hide your explosives…
But it’s Geirharðsdóttir’s film, in both of her roles. She has a quiet yet absolute commitment to her cause, and it’s thoroughly convincing, even to someone like me who thinks “Earth First” means “We can strip-mine the other planets later.” I still found myself rooting for her, as she scurried across the Icelandic moors, using low-tech means to counter the authorities with their drones and thermal imaging cameras. For what’s as much a comedic drama as anything, these sequences pack their share of tension, and I was left wondering how it would get resolved. It is a bit of a cheat – are the Icelandic authorities that incompetent? I’ll let it pass, since this demonstrates the way message movies should be executed.