101 Reykjavik - A small movie review.

Song Du Jour - The Bleeding Heart Show by The New Pornographers.

Hey.

Am feeling more on the shit side of things today, and haven't been able to eat in more than 24 hours. But on the plus side, I've lost 6 pounds. Score!

101 Reykjavik is a feck hot book by Hallgrimur Helgason which was published in 1996.

The book is fab, but, and please don't shoot me here. I'm going to talk about the film. Yes! I know! I normally hate book to movie swaps, (Unless it involves the actors RPatz and Jackson Rathbone, but that is for a whole other issue....)

The film 101 Reykjavik was made in 2000, and directed by Baltasar Kormákur.

The film stars Hilmir Snær Guðnason as the roguish? No, lazy but lovable anti hero Hylmur. Hulmur is pushing thirty and still lives with his mother Berglind. (Hanna María Karlsdóttir,) in her very groovy house. (a bath with a lid on is the dining bench. It works and looks fab, believe me.

He does the same things every day. Wakes up after noon. Cashes in his empty coke bottles for a pack of smokes and mooches off to find the nearest party. Or down to the pub with his friends.

"The boozer-loser-blues piss-up pick-up place. Old meat served on every table. Recycled jawbones kissing, pickled bollocks in pussy juice. Everybody's had everybody. It's like the waiting room at the VD clinic. Everybody locked up in the same DNA chain. Abortions floating between the tables. This place is haunted by unborn children. It's like the family reunion of a non-existent family." - Hylmur.

The film does take some rather philosophical ramblings from Hylmur's narrated dialogue in the book. Such as "People only live in Iceland because they are born here." And, "I was dead before I was born, and I will be dead again when I die. Living is just a break from being dead." And my personal fave, "Saturday night [at the pub/club] is just friday night part two. Everyone talks about last night like it's a sequel."

I can think of a shit load more quotes but I'm rambling and don't want to ruin it for you. I'm that kind of kind.

Anyways, heres Hylmur.

Awww Cute and bespectacled huh?

Everything's going along smoothly. Hylmur spends his days in his set routine, mostly ignoring his one night stand girl Hofy, (who is desperately trying to make Hylmur turn into a steady boyfriend and settle down...)

Enter Lola.

Lola (Victoria Abril) is Hylmur's mother's flamenco dancing teacher. It quickly becomes apparent, to the viewer at least, that their relationship is a special kinda relationship. Wink wink.

Eventually christmas rolls round, and Hylmur and his mother drive up to his perfect big sisters house. She has it all. House in the 'burbs, Husband, kids, new car every year. The lot.

You can she she is making an effort for Christmas to be perfect, but alas, there's only so much you can do to a room of boring people. (Here Hylmur imagines a very vivid bloodbath scene, where he takes a shot gun off the wall and proceeds' to shoot all the people in the room. Much screaming)

Next up is new years. Here, his mum Berglind, drives to visit more family, leaving Lola and Hylmur alone to ring in the new years. They get drunk and... (dot, dot, dot.)

Later on we see Hylmurs' calm exterior start to crack, we see him face the prospect of two children to different women, his mother coming out the closet and re evaluating his life.

"Lola will be his mum, and my mum will be his dad. And I'll be his brother, but his father too, and the son of his dad and of his grandmother and his mothers ex-lover." - Hylmur

I wont say much else. You go watch it. Oh, and go read the book.

TMx

Movie Tag line. 30° below zero, five hours of daylight, what else can you do but get wrecked.