Terrifying Icelandic Drama – The Hollywood Reporter

“Natorium”

Courtesy of LevelK and Bjartsýn Films

When, in the opening minutes of Natatorium, a fresh-faced teenager arrives at a trendy gallery filled with a house, and appears to be checking into a lavish Airbnb. But the well-appointed residence, dominated by deep icy blue, turns out to be the unsanitary ancestral home she hasn’t seen in years. Alienation and silence are the guiding principles in this enclosed universe, which, as the title of Helena Stefansdottir’s drama indicates, contains an indoor swimming pool. “Don’t go downstairs” would be a useful subtitle. Not that the upper floors provide much shelter.

In a film that ultimately focuses on a triad of female relatives with cross-purposes – visiting Lilja, her formidable grandmother and her somewhat rebellious aunt – the strange 18-year-old is the catalyst for the discoveries and revelations to come. Traveling from her island home, Lilja (Elmur María Arnarsdóttir) arrives in the city by bus, cello aboard, to stay with relatives she barely knows while she goes through the audition process for a performance troupe. (After a short series of exterior shots, there is no sense of the surrounding world once the story begins.)

Her arrival sets off alarm bells in a collection of keys and registers. Lilja’s father, Magnus (Arnard Dan Christianson), who is not seen until late in the proceedings, calls his younger sister Vala (Stefania Berndsen) to ask her to keep an eye on Lilja. In a measure of familial warmth among this group, Vala’s greeting is not “hello” but “why are you calling me?” He hopes she can lure his daughter away from the home of Áróra (Elin Petersdottir) and Grímur (Valur Freyr Einarsson). The reasons for his anxiety are unstated – but it soon becomes clear that no one in this small clan says much of anything directly when talking about the subject is an option.

Among the topics of conversation are two of Áróra and Grímur’s children: a girl who died years before, very young, and the bedridden 28-year-old Kali (Jonas Alfred Perkisson), Vala’s twin and the focus of Áróra’s project into corruption. . He is a disturbing Jesus figure lost in a room that suggests medical care but offers none, filled with debris and rubble and the record books Áróra keeps of vital signs. It’s the first thing she insists on showing Lilja when she arrives, as a science project she’s proud of. It takes a stranger, Magnus’ friend Irena (Kristin Pétorsdóttir), to break the spell, at least for a second, when she asks the obvious question: Why isn’t he in the hospital?

With distinct lips and hooded eyes reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling and Pietersdottir (whose screen credits, at the other end of the spectrum, include, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga) inhabits the role of Áróra with quiet menace. Aurora is the type of woman who asks her husband, without sarcasm or humor, to “use your words.” The woman is a twisted, superior mother looking to prey, and there is a pseudo-Christian element to the rituals she devises for baptism and penance (read: torture). Grímur, as warm and comforting as she is frosty, watches with mild alarm as she guides the newly arrived Lilja in a kind of prayer. He is the home-cooked cook who feeds the madness, and like many people who willfully aid blindness, he sleeps blissfully.

In response to the Áróra’s silent and harsh religion, there are gestures of pagan refutation: the flower crown that the withered Kalli sometimes wears, the real cure for Vala’s thriving pharmacy. But Vala, plagued by guilt over her twin’s fate, is only somewhat defiant. She drinks and looks the other way most of the time, repeating the party line: “He’s got weak lungs.”

Everyone also agrees that the pool in the basement has been empty for years, even if they haven’t ventured downstairs to look at it. They may also be hesitant about news headlines about a faraway place. However, Lilja discovers the truth shortly after her arrival, perhaps to her peril.

The water theme is ominously permeated through Snorri Frer Hilmarsson’s stunning production design, which uses cold palette and pebbled glass, among other elements, to create a kind of streamlined baroque. The pool itself occupies a space between upscale decor and nightmare. With sinuous movements and increasing foreboding, Kirto Hakkarainen’s camerawork creeps through the secret-filled house, abetted by Jacob Groth’s score, and a little Schubert, in conveying interwoven moods of mourning and suspense.

With just three short films, writer-director Stefansdottir has delivered an impressive debut film, assembling a great cast and a strong roster behind the camera. Film screenplay (partly inspired by the short story “Swimming” from Celeste Ramos’s self-published collection Women in strange places) It might have benefited from more brevity and fewer narrative elements, but there is a compelling transparency to the symbolism of water in the film. Here are people stuck in an element that most of them refuse to see. The elaborate outfit Lilja dons in her audition is a naiad (and where she chooses to hang it in the house indicates the coming unrest). When her childhood friend and romantic interest, David (Stormore John Kormakur Balthasarson), visits her, he enters through a window, after the rest of the family is asleep, an innocent who slips into an inhospitable swamp.

Late in the drama, Magnus utters a devastating line to his sister. Having escaped his parents’ sphere of influence and built a life on a nearby island, he may be the one to demolish the pretense of civility and uncover the truth. (The shot of him and Vala blowing up balloons for a family celebration is priceless.) But after hearing his sister’s honest opinion of what they had been through, he relented: “I’m sorry to hear you look at it that way.” he told her, like any bureaucrat coddling a brave, uncomfortable protester.

Individual scenes and moments Natatorium This may be infuriating, or make you wonder why all these people are lying to themselves and to each other, but the cumulative effect is powerful, and its effects are significant. It is at once elegant, strange, and, unfortunately, a universal story about self-protective silence and fear, and the monsters that sometimes drive us around, whether the group in question is a family, a business, or voters.