Small
Icelandic towns are a good place to keep secrets, because people do not talk
much there. At least, they are pretty taciturn in this coastal village, as well
as the one in the recently released A White, White Day. Disgraced German
reporter has come to cover a long-rumored bacchanal, but that story is fake
news. However, he might have a line on an explosive tabloid story (that would
ironically rehabilitate his reputation) in Lise Raven’s Snaeland, which
screens (virtually) as part of the (online) 2020 Brooklyn Film Festival.
After
indelicately asking multiple residents, Haas accepts the town really doesn’t
hold an annual midnight sun festival of drunken debauchery for his readers to
gawk at. He stumbles across something more potentially scandalous. A notorious
French au pair, who was convicted of murdering her Wall Street employer-lover’s
baby, is alive and well, living in town, after apparently faking her suicide. She
is now known as Melanie Clement, a bee-keeper married to the local cab-driver.
Rather
conveniently, Oskar Hrafnsson thinks his wife’s bee-keeping would make a good
story, so Haas opportunistically plays along. Of course, Clement is suspicious
of him, but she still tries to humor her husband. There is definitely a test of
wits going on, but descriptions of Snaeland as a thriller or noir are
overblown. Even “psychological drama” overstates matters. It is really a dark morality
play and a scathing critique of media voyeurism.
In
fact, Raven and co-screenwriter Deborah Goodwin sort of over-play that hand by
equating with Haas with the village peeping tom, whom he catches red-handed, so
to speak. The distastefulness of his behavior rather distracts from and undermines
the analogy. Still, you certainly cannot accuse them of pulling their punches,
which is also true of Clement’s infanticide crime (although she is said to have
claimed it was an accident).
Frank
Bruckner is convincingly sleazy and slimy, while still finding some deeply
buried vestiges of humanity in Haas—albeit what resurfaces, definitely comes
under the heading of a day late and a krona short. Emily Behr is necessarily
remote and inscrutable as Clement, while Vikingur Kristjansson adds poignant
pathos as poor, confused Hrafnsson.
Raven
is a filmmaker with U.S. and German connections, but the vibe of Snaeland is
about as frostily Scandinavian as a film can get. The dazzling midnight sun is
effectively disorienting, but the slow-burning intensity could sometime use
more heat. It is an interesting film, but it really doesn’t engage on an
emotional level. For curious viewers, Snaeland screens virtually (for free)
during this year’s Brooklyn Film Festival (5/29-6/7).
