Friendship and adolescence are at the heart of this new film from the director of “Hearstone: An Icelandic Summer”, set in the heart of a district of Reykjavik where social misery and violence reign.
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Published
Reading time: 3 min
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In this second film, the Icelandic director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson features a group of teenagers confronted with social violence and parental neglect. A film that explores the theme of adolescence in an extreme social context. The Beautiful Creatures hits theaters September 25.
Balli, a puny and fearful teenager, is bullied by the neighborhood teenagers. He lives alone with a mother who is often absent, and weak when she is not. The house is a slum where garbage, dirty dishes and dust accumulate. The ghost of a violent stepfather, temporarily incarcerated, lurks in the walls.
Addi, the same age, grows up with her little sister and her mother. In this serene house compared to Balli’s, the mother interprets her dreams, which can sometimes turn out to be premonitory. The father, an alcoholic, is absent.
Addi forms with his two buddies Konni, a big tough guy with a quick punch, and Siggi, his kindly scapegoat, a well-armed team against the violence that reigns at school and in the streets of the neighborhood. Addi takes Balli under his wing, who soon becomes the fourth thief in the gang.
The four boys hang out in the streets, fight with boys from other gangs, and regularly meet up at Balli’s house, where his sister has reappeared. Little by little, they find themselves overwhelmed by violence, their own and that of others, that they can no longer control…
With this second feature film, the Icelandic director paints a portrait of an age, the one that closes childhood and opens adulthood, in a particularly violent social context. In this peripheral district of Reykjavik, far from the postcard images of this island with its wild nature, adults seem too preoccupied by their own difficulties to take care of their children, who grow up without a framework, and without love. “Do we really know our children’s daily lives?”we hear from the mouth of a journalist who expresses concerns about “The rise of violence among Icelandic youth”.
Provocations, alcohol, fights, expeditions on the roofs of buildings… The four boys seek the limits in a world where they seem to have completely disappeared. Poverty, sexual assault, alcohol, drugs… The teenagers experience a form of brutal hyper-masculinity, which comes through violence.
But in this spiral that seems never to stop, they also stick together and try to bring a little gentleness and justice into this world in which they grow up, gangrened by the irresponsible, even criminal, behavior of adults. A world in which men, fathers, are notoriously absent, when they are not downright aggressors. The premonitory dreams of Addi and her mother, far from calming, contribute to accentuating the tension, which rises crescendo throughout the film.
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The organic form of this second feature film by the Icelandic director perfectly translates this urgency of adolescence, with very tight shots, thunderous sound, movement, and more impressionistic images for the dreamlike part of the story. This staging, tense as a rope, is deployed in a rhythm that never calms down, like violence — and brings out emotions at every moment, those of a lost youth that puts all its energy into motion and counts on friendship to regain confidence, to try to get out of the abyss to become, against all odds, peaceful adults.
Served by dazzling young actors, The Beautiful Creatures is an edifying film, without concessions, from which one emerges as if shaken after a trip through the washing machine.
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Gender : drama
Director: Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson
Actors: Birgir Dagur Bjarkason, Áskell Einar Pálmason, Viktor Benóný Benediktsson
Country : Iceland
Duration : 2h 03min
Exit : September 25, 2024
Distributer : Outplay Films
Synopsis : Addi, 14, is raised by his clairvoyant mother who sees the future in dreams. He takes Balli, an introverted and marginalized boy, a victim of school bullying, under his wing. By integrating him into his gang, these idle and self-sufficient boys explore brutality and violence as their only means of expression and existence. As the group’s problems worsen, Addi begins to experience a series of dreamlike visions. Will his new intuitions allow him to guide them and find their own path?