BEAUTIFUL BEINGS (Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson 2022)

[Chris Knipp]

HJARTASTEINN/HEARTSTONE (Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson 2016)



TRAILER

Heartstone (2016), Guðmundsson's debut film, is available on YouTube now (free). At 129 minutes it is a bit overlong, as many reviewers have commented. It seems to be meandering and episodic at first. But the last third is more and more focused, intense, and emotional. It winds up being heartbreaking. At first I thought this was going to be one of those other films by a director that makes you lower your opinion of him. But no, on the contrary. Same excellent Norwegian dp, Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, provides images that are breathtakingly fresh and gorgeous, the actors as real and captured on the fly as magically as in Beautiful Beings.

Heartstone is about two 14-year-old boys in a rural little fishing town where the possible gayness of Kristján (Blær Hinriksson) which his close best friend Thor [Þór] (Baldur Einarsson) may or may not share, probably not, just isn't going to be met with sympathy or understanding. This is one of the most impressive and touching films about the difficulty of growing up gay you'll ever see. Certainly there are some coming of age notes that are familiar, but that's forgotten when they're handled with this kind of command. The unique milieu and the unfamiliar Icelandic language add a lot. Confirmation that Guðmundsson matters.