Film Shapes

Not a Word is a slow burner that never actually catches fire. Nina is a maestra with a big performance on the horizon. Lars is her teenage son, as stroppy as they come. Has something happened to make him this as way? Will we ever find out? Well, it's a good 40 minutes or so until the subject is broached, and that's the nub of the film. Thematically, it's all about the unsaid, the lack of discussion and the effects this kind of verbal inertia can have on relationships - in this case, mother and son. Fair topic, but I found this reeked of missed opportunities. The performance of Maren Eggert as Nina is solid enough, though not Hüller level, nor even Kruger. It's the character of Lars, though, that wound me up. Jona Levin Nicolai plays him without an ounce of empathy, sure he's a surly teen but there's zero connection with the audience here. Nina is supposed to be equally guilty of fractures in their pairing, yet I was 100% on her side in this. I'm not sure th...

An unexpected freebie turned up (thanks to Merv) for this little Swedish thriller at the Scandinavian Film Festival . It's from a first-time writer/director called Johan Storm, and it's probably just be a coincidence that a load of this film occurs during storms. Our protagonist, David (Johan L. Heinstedt), finds a box full of his dead dad's old documents at his mum's house and this prompts him to shoot off to an island in the Arctic Circle, where his old man was doing some meteorological research. Or was he? David sets up in the North lighthouse and soon encounters Sarah (Hanne Mathisen Haga) in the South lighthouse - first on shortwave, then later in person. Curious to find out what his dad was up to, David stumbles upon various things, from non-creepy mystery letters to a very-fucking-creepy dungeon inside a cave! Double your phobia pleasure right there. Oh, and they may not be the only living things on this murky, wind-swept island of fun. It's a pretty neat sce...