Direction: Hlynur Palmason
Country: Iceland
The second feature from writer/director Hlynur Palmason (Winter Brothers, 2017) is a grim tale of grief, jealousy and anger set in a remote Icelandic town and centered on the unpredictable Ingimundur (Ingvar Sigurdsson), an off duty cop who, after losing his wife to a fatal car accident, becomes obsessed in finding more about the local man he suspects to have had an affair with her.
Unable to properly mourn his loss, Ingimundur is examined and evaluated by a psychiatrist. Having said that, if we take his impulsive actions and confrontational gestures as examples, and mix them with a strong sense of pride and an uncontrolled rage, it’s easy to conclude that he’s far from being ok and might even pose a danger to others. Things will get even tenser to viewers after they realize that Salka (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir), his eight-year-old granddaughter, becomes unnecessarily exposed to his irrationality. The thought of a child being scared and traumatized like this made me look at Ingimundur with loathing.
The committed acting from Sigurdsson, whose disarming demeanors can quickly swell from hushed to howling, is the main reason why this impressively mounted film works so well. Moreover, the awesome visuals are fine-tuned to the profoundly stirring if occasionally infuriating story.
Being as much harrowing as entertaining, A White, White Day will likely be considered thought-provoking for the ones interested in an atypically disturbing character study.
